by Anne Glynn
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Some things are just wrong.

4/21/2016

2 Comments

 
Picture
A prime example? This image on the left.
 
Maybe I’d better add a little backstory to this. You see, outside of our writing life, Glynn and I have our own personal email accounts – I doubt we’re alone in the use of multiple email accounts…and, now, thinking about this, I’ve gotten distracted. I wonder exactly how many email accounts we do have.
 
There’s our primary email address (it’s HiAnneGlynn via the gmail system, if you care to reach out and contact us); a secondary email address we use for our second pen name (and, although that name hasn’t published anything for the last couple of years, we still respond to a few emails every week); a third email address for our third pen name (nobody writes that guy); a FOURTH email address, established for still another pen name until we decided that three pseudonyms was, really, enough for now; my just Anne account, linked to my efforts in the artwork world, and my friends in the oils and acrylic biz; a just Glynn account, used mostly so he can scratch his collector’s itch, his sports itch, his...well, he's itchy; a joint family email address, so the Moms will know where to reach both of us at the same time, especially since neither Mom can ever remember even one of our pen names; and a spam email address, used for those times when a site demands an electronic mailbox or they won’t let you proceed to doing whatever it is you truly want.
 
Eight email addresses for two people. That seems like a lot and, when I’m struggling to remember which password went to which account, it seems like way too many. Now curious to see if I’ve overindulged in inboxes, I'm going to take a moment to investigate this. I'll be back.
 
​And now I am. In a very short time, I've found that Yahoo Mail is okay with eight email addys (at Yahoo, each person is allowed 10 addresses) and the gmail folks think we’re pikers (they encourage people to have as many accounts as they’d like). Apartmenttherapy.com suggests people have either two or four sites each -- they said two, initially, then changed their mind -- so, to my mind, we’re doing okay. I mean, I might doubt myself but how can I doubt Apartmenttherapy.com?
 
Even though I’d never been to Apartmenttherapy.com until this morning, and have no idea if they promote Evil or are a force for Good.
 
Do you want to know which of our email accounts gets the most action? The spam address, of course. It fills up daily. It’s a good thing that Team Google offers a fairly limitless space on their gmails, or Kohls and World Market would have maxed us out, big time. If Apartmenttherapy.com had demanded a contact address, you can guess which one I’d have given them.
 
But here’s the thing. One day in the not so distant past, Team Google decided that people should be allowed to pin an image to the emails they sent. Glynn thought this sounded like fun, went to HiAnneGlynn, and popped in a cover from one of our early stories. It’s mostly a picture of my legs, and they are perfectly adequate legs, but who in their right mind sends emails to people and includes a shot of their legs? I guess, maybe if we were selling nylons or hooker heels (since my feet were also in the picture and squeezed into the heels in question) but, other than that, it’s just wrong. We had a discussion, it went nowhere, and I tried not to use that email address for a bit. Once a few days passed and Glynn got distracted by some shiny object, I changed the picture to the one that used to sit in the upper right-hand corner of this website: Me, in a cowgirl hat.
 
Meanwhile, my honey decided to add his own photo to the “just Glynn” account. He picked a nice shot, one where he was sitting on the rim of the Grand Canyon, looking into the sun as the wind blew in his hair. When I first saw it, I told him it was a good pic but I felt he needed to use one of his older ones. I thought he should go with the one that was taken when he lost a bet and had to spend an hour walking around a beach, blushing, while wearing the teeniest Speedo swimsuit ever made. (Black. So tight he could barely breath.) (Don’t feel sorry for him. If I’d been the one to lose the bet, you should have seen what he expected me to wear.)
 
“If you want, you can crop the photo and just show your legs,” I told him. He didn’t go for it.
 
A few days ago, he must have tired of a regular Glynn photo because he decided to replace it with the close-up of the Mad Monkey that you see here. This battery-operated beastie is at least fifty years old, coming into our possession when I suddenly decided I needed one for a painting. Daishin C.K. sold him and his identical brothers as “Musical Jolly Chimp” for many years. They used this name, I presume, because their marketing team thought that the more truthful title of “Screeching Death Monkey” would have affected sales negatively. The first time I pressed the toy’s head, it banged its cymbals, barred its teeth and gave a terrible death cry that actually shocked me. Yes, I laughed after, but I’m telling you, that toy does not share a room with me late at night.
 
In the outside world, you can find the mechanical monster without looking too hard. It’s on the cover of one of Stephen King’s books, and it’s featured in one of his stories; it’s seen in music videos; it’s seen in horror films, t.v. shows, on posters, and…well, check Wikipedia for “cymbal-banging monkey toy” and they’ll give you the complete rundown. It’s usually used as a symbol of fear. It’s mostly, and rightly, seen as something that scares people.
 
Yet this is what my man decides to use on his gmail account. I tell you, from here on out, I do the marketing for our work.

2 Comments
AJ
8/26/2016 12:11:45 am

Hello, I do some translation work on Babelcube and I have to say the term Babelcubians sounded hilarious to me. I have heard similar things about translators just disappearing. On the other hand I myself had a bad experience as a translator when after translating a romance authors novella into Spanish and having turned it in and accepted. Everything was mysteriously canceled. I had no warning and only figured this out after looking on my dashboard to see why it hadn't been published. I still do some translating for Babelcube but am extremely leery of who I chose to offer to do a translation for.

It's especially frustrating because that was several months of work that I didn't get paid for and then I didn't even manage to earn anything off of the royalties. So far I haven't been one of the lucky ones whose translation work had paid off but I do it now on the side because I am optimistic. However, I am extremely choosy. I am currently translating a novel from Spanish into English and some short stories. it doesn't seem to pay to invest in longer length novels without a guarantee of some revenue. The novel I am doing is for an author who has so far not had success in the English market but she seems nice and I have developed a good relationship with her so I decided to do this last translation for her even though I don't expect it to pay off. I will concentrate on shorter stories in the future. Please excuse any typos as it is 2 a.m and my brain is not working at its best.

Reply
Anne Glynn
8/26/2016 09:30:52 am

Welcome, A.J., and I'm glad you stopped by my website. Your comments seem to have traveled over from one post to another; this was kind of the "creepy monkey toy" post. But, since you're here, let's talk Babelcube.

I enjoyed reading your comments. From private conversations with another translator, I know you're not alone in regards to your frustration with Babelcube or your lack of royalties. There's a lot of that going around right now.

There are people who are making some money on the 'cube, or so I hear, but they're far outnumbered by those who aren't making much of anything. I know, because I'm one of them. My translated novella isn't setting any sales charts on fire. Zombie Apocalypse is big in Japan, I'm told, so many I should have looked for a Japanese translator for World War Zelda. But there you go.

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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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