8 THINGS YOU MIGHT NOT KNOW ABOUT ME...

Happy New Year everyone! 2015 is finally here and only 19 more days until the release of my debut picture book, THE STORY CATCHER, by Anaiah Press. Since I've been waiting almost 45 years for this momentous occasion, I've decided to not only celebrate my book's 'birthday', but to celebrate all month long!

To start things off, I'm going to list eight things you might not know about me. Here goes:

8. I am Cherokee/Scots-Irish on my mother's side and Cajun/Atakapa on my father's side. While I enjoy listening to most Cajun music, it is the bagpipes that will bring me to tears and I hope to visit Scotland one day.

7. I was sent to Waikiki Beach many years ago by a company I was working for at the time to provide a deposition in a legal matter. While I was there I ended up in the middle of a volcano and have the pictures to prove it!

6. I LOVE animals and have had a menagerie at different times in my life, including rabbits, quails, pigeons, dogs, cats, turtles, fish, guinea pigs, and hermit crabs.

5. I almost committed suicide by drowning when I was 14 but was saved by my guardian angel. My story was later bought by Chicken Soup For The Soul and is part of the Angels Among Us edition.

4. I ran away from home for a day when I was about 12 and ended up on the other side of town at a horse stable run by my next door neighbor at the time. He let me hang around and feed the horses, even giving me a ride on one before taking me back home. My mother never found out.

3. I started writing poetry when I was only 8 years old and later collaborated with my sister to create new work that ended up in two volumes of poetry by the time I was about 15.

2. If I could only take one food with me to a deserted island, it would be Kroger chicken hot from the deli. I used to think KFC made the best chicken but I was wrong.

1. I can actually talk like Yoda but don't do it often and only a handful of people have ever heard me.

As you can see, there are many layers to my personality and interests. I hope you learned something new about me today and be sure to check back tomorrow for the next post in my month long celebration!

You can preorder my book, THE STORY CATCHER, now through Amazon, www.amazon.com, or Barnes & Noble, www.barnesandnoble.com. It is available in both ebook and print copies. Here is the book blurb and book trailer.

Blurb:

 Addie comes from a long line of readers, or "story catchers," as her family likes to call themselves. Every time Addie tries to catch a story on her own, though, the words play tricks on her. Addie tries everything she can think of to corral those wiggly letters, but it will take a little faith to become the next STORY CATCHER.

 Trailer:

Happy Anniversary To Me!

Sometimes in the rush to balance everything on my plate, I forget just how far I have come with this blog. I realized last night that today, December 6, 2013, is my official TWO YEAR BLOG ANNIVERSARY. Time to do the happy dance!

Then I had to stop and catch my breath for a second. Two years. Two wonderfully, turbulent, mesmerizing, overwhelming years where i worked hard to take this blog from an audience of one...thank you, Janet...to something much, much bigger. I looked over this blog's current stats and thought I would share just how far I have come in twenty-four little months:

Number of posts written or hosted...500

Number of pageviews...253,721 (That's a QUARTER OF A MILLION VIEWS PEOPLE!)

Number of followers...2525 (People who follow me or this blog through Blogger, Linkedin, Twitter, Facebook, Goodreads, Tumbler, and Quora.)

Number of countries visiting...19 (This little blog is read in the United States as well as Ireland, England, Scotland, Canada, Russia, Germany, Australia, India, Malaysia, Philippines, China, France, New Zealand, Spain, South Korea, Bahamas, Bangladesh, and the Ukraine.)

Excuse me while I take a moment to put my head between my knees. My world is spinning with the possibility there are actually that many people who freely choose to stop by this blog. I am honored and humbled by such kindness and will strive to keep my posts worthy of such expectations.

These past two years have been a series of ups and downs. Some of the downsides included my Yahoo account being hacked and some people were worried I was stuck in some third world country without enough money to get home. Fortunately my friends were intelligent enough to know I never left Tennessee, so a simple change of passwords and creation of a different email account resolved that problem. Another downside was more insidious and ongoing. An ex-student of mine chose to stalk this blog and attempt to post comments which just meant I had to block the multiple accounts as they were set up, tag them as spam, and delete the comments. Small price to pay to keep my readers safe. The stalking continues but as long as that student chooses to refrain from posting comments, who am I to prevent them from enjoying my posts? Maybe they will learn something along the way...

The ups have been far greater in number. I have participated in three of Tara Lazar's PiBoIdMo challenges and came out a winner with 98 PB ideas to show for it. I have participated in Julie Hedlund's 12 X 12 forum where I now have 10 completed manuscripts and 19 works in progress under my belt. My FREE AUTHOR PROMOTION grew from 31 authors participating the first year with 350 autographed items to 43 authors this past year and 1000 autographed items! I've submitted some of my stories to 53 agents, received 2 requests for additional submissions, and managed to get one of my stories published in January of this year through Chicken Soup For The Soul: Angels Among Us edition. My WRITERLY WISDOM series (which is sadly coming to a close at the end of December) has been a joy to host where all kinds of lovely authors, agents, and illustrators have taken the time to share their own wisdom with my readers. And then there was my RAYS OF SUNSHINE blog post which has received over 15,000 page views to date! You can check it out if you'd like by clicking on the link...http://donasdays.blogspot.com/2012/05/rays-of-sunshine.html. I'm not sure why that particular post connected with so many people but it sure makes me giddy inside to realize it has!

So what's in store for the new year? 

You know me. Forever changing, forever evolving. I gave it a lot of thought and have decided to make a few changes with my readers in mind and to continue my mission to support this wonderful writing community as much as I can. With that in mind, here is my new blogging schedule beginning in January:

Monday...my readers will still receive inspirational posts but I might expand it a bit more instead of just focussing on writing analogies.

Wednesday...as an extension of my FREE AUTHOR PROMOTION, I will create my BOOK NOOK REVIEWS in which I will shine the spotlight on various authors who have kindly provided autographed books as part of my giveaways during my city's Children's Festival of Reading every May. This way, not only do I get the chance to show off their books to the over 15,000 people who walk by my booth each year, but I will now expand that FREE AUTHOR PROMOTION to my over 2500 followers...and maybe THEIR followers as well as I help spread the word about great books!

Fridays...I'm trying something new. I'm calling it my TALES FROM THE BAYOU. Whenever I tell stories about some of the things that have happened to me both as a child  growing up in the swamps of Louisiana and as a young woman trying to find her way in the world, people have said, "you aught to write a book!" So I figure, why not just tell you about the wild and crazy things that helped me become the person I am today?  Some of my tales will be good for a chuckle, some might bring tears to your eyes, and some might even touch your heart. At least that is what I will set out to attempt and you, my dear readers, will let me know if I succeed or not.

Well, there you have it! A look back at the past two years of this blog and my life as a writer. What will the next two years hold? Maybe an agent offering representation? Maybe a book deal? Maybe another Chicken Soup story to add to my collection?

I can only hope...

Hamza Balol Gets Around



When I first started writing professionally about three years ago (January 2010), it was just me and my cat, Tommy.  I didn't write for the masses and I didn't encourage a fan base.  I wrote for the pure joy of it, as a welcome release for all the words stuck in my head begging to come out.  That first year was a time for reconnecting with the writer within me...to see what I was made of...and to measure my words against what was already published.

I started gathering great books about the craft of writing and read everything I could get my hands on.  I was introduced to the blogosphere and on December 6th, 2011, I created my blog ON THE WRITE TRACK because I felt I was ready to connect with others.  I wrote inspirational posts about what writing meant to me and began to reach out to others through online groups.  One day I realized I was beginning to generate a fan base.  Every person who commented on a post would get a reply from me.  I would return the favor and began reading their blogs.  I went in search of blogs which appealed to me and expanded into the world of Facebook.  All along the way I made sure to connect and respond to every person who reached out to me.

By January 2013 I had celebrated my first year anniversary of my blog by achieving over 300 followers and over 175,000 views so far.  Last year was a huge learning curve for me.  I learned about LinkedIn, and Twitter, soon adding them to my platform.  I joined critique groups, created a FREE author promotion event as my way of giving back to the writing community which was hugely sucessful (doing it again this year), entered contests, submitted stories (and had one accepted for publication), and made great strides in strenghtening my skills as a writer.  I also dealt with a hacker who tried to destroy my life by lying to my friends (no, I never was stuck on some island resort with no way to get home) and erasing all my contact information within Yahoo and Facebook.  The person from Africa, whom I originally befriended, had nothing better to do than to interfere with my little life.  He decided to erase all my archived files of my stories and more than a year's research I had stored online.

It was hard at first to believe such a thing happened to me, but I am that way...honest, trusting, believing the best in all people until proven otherwise and even then, still giving second chances sometimes.  Fortunately the stories were saved elsewhere but my research was gone.  I can't say I wasn't upset by the turn of events but I eventually looked at it as a lesson to be a little less trusting when dealing with my online persona and my writing.

Maybe that is why when I received this note last night, warning bells started flashing in my head:

Hello Ms. Donna,

I am not sure whether or not you are the one who wrote the wonderful story "Shortcut to Peace," from the 'Angels Among Us' book of the Chicken Soup for the Soul series. The story, however, touched my heart and soothed my soul in a very positive way.

Best regards,

Hamza Balol

Saudi Arabia

"Shortcut To Peace" is my first published piece and who wouldn't be thrilled to think it touched the heart of someone half way across the world?  But something just didn't feel right and despite the fact I am so used to immediately replying to comments sent to me, I did a little research on Mr. Balol first.

 

 

It appears that Hamza Balol not only gets around but can change age and gender.  Googling the name shows he is not only a very young girl who appears to be the chief executive officer of a large company but also a middle aged man.  I'm not sure what his fascination is with following these types of stories but he has posted basically the same "touching" message on a number of other blogs and Facebook pages of writers submitting to Chicken Soup and like publications.  Unfortunately others have mistaken Hamza's comments for an invitation to begin a online conversation with him and that is when the scam begins.

 

I pray none of my REAL online friends and fans are ever taken in by someone like my buddy, Hamza, and in my research I even managed to locate some other Hamza Balols who might be taking a beating to their own integrity by having their name associated with a scam artist.  My heart goes out to those other Hamzas.
 

While I would like think my words may one day inspire others and touch their hearts, today is not the day and so I will let Mr. Balol's "heartfelt" note to me float off into the vast unknown of the Internet...maybe one day HIS poor soul will get the validation it so desparately needs so he won't feel the need to unnecessarily try to validate MINE.  Don't worry, Hamza, I'm doing just fine without you...;~)