by Anne Glynn
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I'm sprinkling germs everywhere.

2/25/2015

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Maybe not exactly “everywhere”, but everywhere in my bedroom. I caught a bug last week, I’m still fighting it – things are far from terrible, they’re just not good – and Glynn has tried to be supportive. By “supportive”, I mean, he’s made me his famous chicken soup. He serves it in one of our colorful Bobby Flay cereal bowls, with a tiny dry biscuit on the side.

I
’ve always liked Glynn’s soup. I really enjoyed it, the first day. Maybe not quite as much, the second day. And on the third day…?

But here’s something that did make me feel better: Live Love Rewind collected its first official review (here). The reader, James H. Mayfield, didn’t 5-star love it, but he did 4-star like it and – even better – he shared his thoughts on Amazon. It turns out, JHM is also an author (Do it Better!: 30 often overlooked and undervalued fitness concepts, behavior tricks, and habits), an athlete, a personal trainer, and an IFBB National champion. If you go to his author’s page on Amazon, you’ll see him with his arms in the air and a medal on his chest, and you can just tell, this guy works really, really hard on the things he does. And he does a lot of things.


I got tired (more tired, anyway), just looking at him. The Good Witch expressed a more admirable opinion but she was careful to make her statement from my bedroom doorway. She knew enough to stay at a distance. She wasn’t going to get my germs sprinkled anywhere near her new outfit.

While she was visiting, Glynn stopped outside the bedroom and offered her a bowl of his famous chicken noodle soup. G.W. declined, which means there’s at least one bowl still out there.

Death, where is thy sting?

Meanwhile, let me tell you a little more about the hard-working James H. Mayfield. When I contacted him, thanking him for my first official review, he offered some handy tips on how to cross-link all of my stories, hopefully increasing book sales across the board. Then he offered some suggestions on how to get a bevy of other readers to comment on Live Love Rewind, so that his review could have some company. To be nice, he also mentioned LLR on his blog, and on his Facebook account (I don’t have a FB account) and on his Twitter feed (I have yet to subscribe to Twitter), and then he lifted weights, ran a marathon, and built an orphanage in eastern Sudan.  He could do all of these things because he’s determined to do his best, no matter what.

The last time I showed that level of determination, it was 20% off day at Kohl’s. Which, by the way, is where I bought the Bobby Flay cereal bowls.

I pretended I would make the same kind of effort if only I wasn’t sick, and do you know what he wrote me? No, of course you don’t, so here it is: I hope you get better soon! If it's a cold/flu/virus something, then I suggest daily doses of Garlic and Turmeric, and Ginger Root and Honey. The first two are more suitable to mix into soups and such, while the ginger and honey taste great in tea. Should help your body fight off any ailment. :) If our situations had been reversed, I’d have told him to cough into his sleeve until he felt better. So it’s probably for the best that he wrote his kind of book, and I wrote mine.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to send Glynn out for some garlic, turmeric, ginger root, and honey. Then, once he’s out of the house, I’m going to pour the remaining chicken soup down the drain.

I’m feeling better already.


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Happy Valentine's Day to you.

2/18/2015

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Belatedly, of course, since neither one of us was here on the actual holiday. If you look at the picture on the left, you'll see what I bought to wear on that day -- $16, Dillard's Clearance Center, can you believe it? -- except the Fates weren't kind, and I got sick instead of celebrating.
 
I'm still not feeling well, if you must know. Later today, I'm off to see the Witch Doctor for a diagnosis. My MD's a nice person, and a very good doctor, but Glynn thinks she looks like...well, that's enough of that. You get the picture.

Speaking of pictures, when the Good Witch heard I was going to put a photo of these shoes on the blog (I always like pictures with my words but I struggle to find any that are appropriate), she thought the idea was hilarious. "It doesn't exactly fit with the cowgirl image, does it?" she said. I felt a little confused but then I remembered the smiling photo of me on the website.

In the next couple of weeks, it'll probably be gone but, today, the photo's on the upper right of the website. The cowgirl snapshot was taken just before Glynn and I went horse riding, so it kind of fit. And since I expected to write mail order bride stories for the next bazillion years, I was happy to post it.
 
Not that I had many Author Photos to choose from; I don't like being in photos, I don't take photos, I've never even done a Selfie. Glynn is as bad as me, or worse, trying to avoid the photographer's attention at almost any price. On a visit to my cousins, the ones we both adore, they wanted a group photo at the end of the stop. Glynn blurted, "Let's get this done so we can go!" and he dashed from the room as soon as the last picture was taken.
 
This, with people we love. I've never asked my cousins what they felt about that special moment. You wouldn't, either.
 
I tried talking Glynn into putting his photo on this website. "Ha ha ha ha ha," he snarled. You probably didn't even know people could snarl, "Ha ha ha ha ha", so let this be a lesson to you. He's a good-looking man when he isn't snarling, so who knows why? I'd call it photophobia but somebody else has already claimed the term.
 
Anyway, G.W. suggested I post a contemporary-looking image to better reflect all of the writing that slips out under the Anne Glynn name. The cowboy hat fits with the stories we set in the Old West but less so in our contemporary romances. I'll follow her suggestion, in the next week or two or three, just so that she doesn't bring it up again.
 
And so that I can post pictures of sexy shoes without her raising an eyebrow at the idea.

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"Another 5-star review!"

2/11/2015

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  “Another 5-star review!”

I have a nice romance-writing friend named Sue. Her novels have never hit the USA Today best-seller list but she does okay. The people that find and read her books seem to love them. If you type her name in on Amazon, you’ll find tens of dozens of four-and-five star reviews for the work she’s done. And do you know how often she’s mentioned one of those reviews to me? I mean, ever?

Exactly zero times.  

She doesn’t think writers should check their reviews, since many of us are never satisfied by the good ones and some of the nasty ones can feel like a dagger in the heart. I think this is a wise philosophy. I try to follow her suggestion and, for the most part, I do. Of course, this is ever so much easier to do when other people don’t send me emails, reminding me that I don’t have any reviews for Live Love Rewind.

I like our novel – a lot – but I always knew the story might struggle to find an audience. It’s a contemporary romance (a pretty crowded field, these days), it’s not a traditional romance (I mean, out-of-this-world aliens allow our heroine to live her life over and over again, in what is somehow not a science-fiction story), and our heroine chooses the wrong guy a couple of times until she gets it right (one hot lover is almost always preferred). But the tale is what it is, I enjoyed writing it, and it’s been downloaded enough that I know some Kindle owners had to have read it.

It’s just that no one has bothered to leave a review after reading the story. That’s okay, I hardly ever take the time to review anything, either. Glynn, on the other hand, loves writing reviews. Instant coffee, over-the-calf white tube socks, and a cell phone charger were some of his most recent postings. He’ll often post a review of an out-of-print book that almost no one has read, just in case someone somewhere might find a copy. It’s like a bizarre hobby.

So where was I? Oh, yes.

So when someone in my writing group emailed me at the beginning of the week, to tell me (a) her romance novella just received “another 5-star Amazon review!” and “I’m so amazed that people love my little story”, I wasn’t in the most receptive mood. I mean, good for her and all, but couldn’t she have just basked quietly in a glow of secret satisfaction? Since we’d never exchanged emails before, did she really have to share this with – well, with me?

I might have felt more kindly about her note if she hadn’t finished with, “So how is Live Love Rewind doing?” (It’s my own fault, talking about recent projects with the group.) Feeling a little pootie, I haven’t answered her. Sales-wise, my book is on a par with her novella, give or take the daily fluctuations. Review-wise, she’s got me beat by a mile. Which I wouldn’t have discovered, if she hadn’t done the humble brag.

I wanted to complain about the email thing to Glynn, but didn’t. I know he thinks it’s a mistake to check reviews, much less compare the number of reviews, so I’d get no satisfaction there. I couldn’t tell Sue, since she’s the no-review gal. I couldn’t even tell G.W., since I know that Glynn and Sue are right about such things. But I wanted to tell someone.

So I’m telling you.


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Three weeks ago, Glynn bought a book.

2/4/2015

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Oh, this is hardly headline news, it’s not like he stares in wonder at the printed word. He's purchased books before. In fact, we've bought so many books over the years that we've adopted a rule: to keep one, you have to toss one. It’s my rule, too. There’s just no room in the house, otherwise.

Which is one reason I love e-books. I have over a hundred of them in my happy little Kindle and it’s far from filled. Electronic paragraphs take up so little room, it’s just wonderful.

So when Glynn wanted to buy a new chunk of non-fiction – it’s Blockbusters: Hit-making, Risk-taking, and the Big Business of Entertainment, and it’s written by Anita Elberse – I really hoped he’d download the thing. He kind of shrugged in a sheepish fashion and told me, not this time. “The Kindle version is $14.99,” he said.

“So you really must want it.” Maybe we’re cheap, or maybe we’re simply not-rich, but I rarely spend more than $5.99 on a download. Glynn usually tops out at about the same price. It's one reason we like self-published books. They usually top out at about that price, too.

“I really do want it,” he admitted. “Which is why I bought the thirty dollar hardcover, instead.” Before I could say anything, he added, “For less than seven dollars.”

At that price, it was a great deal. Still, I reminded him, “Once you add in shipping –“

“The seven dollar price includes shipping.”

I believe my mate thought he was telling the truth but I was positive he was somehow mistaken. He wasn’t. So then I decided that the seller functioned out of some Bizarro Universe where “new” meant “terribly worn and awful” and, maybe, “smells of animal droppings” so I fell quiet. And waited for the other shoe to drop.

When Glynn received the volume yesterday, the pages had a little black stab of color at the bottom, indicating this was a remaindered book. Otherwise, Blockbusters looked as if he’d just picked it up at the local bookstore.

This is bad news for the local bookstore. It is bad news for the Anne Glynn team, as well, as our stories were already competing against free e-books, cheap e-books, Kindle Unlimited e-books, and e-books written by people more famous than we are. (At present, almost everyone is more famous than we are. Including you.) I had no idea we were battling the forces of discounted physical copies, too.

The good news? Glynn is enjoying the book so much, he's planning to replace one of his old favorites. Well done, Anita Elberse.


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    Welcome!

    At the back of my paperbacks and e-books, you'll find this:
     
    A collector of vintage Barbies and younger boyfriends, Anne Glynn currently resides in the American Southwest.
     
    The truth is a little more complicated. I'm Anne and my S.W.P. (Significant Writing Partner) is Glynn. Together, we write as 'Anne Glynn'.
     
    However, I am a collector of vintage Barbies and I have, on occasion, collected the younger boyfriend. Not so much these days.
     
    I'm glad you're here.
     

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