Dragging My Butt

I have editors block.  At the moment my life is so crazy I can find a million other things to do besides be certain I am happy with my final copy of the book.  This is only my edit.  There will be three other edits where I will have to listen to suggestions of others whom I have asked to critique the book, and at least one through the publisher before the copy editor.

I thought I could multitask well while tearing apart my home to ready for a move, but it became apparent that cannot happen.  With just weeks away before the move the anxiety of the preparation is getting to me.  I feel I spend more time thinking about furniture placement, and where to store what, and whether to buy this or that, and less time on packing, picking through the last dregs of miscellaneous items and throwing out some more stuff I guarantee I don't need.

February And The Grass Is Green

Being a Canadian used to the change in climate with each season, I find myself like the little creature outside....confused as heck!  Should I be hibernating or should I be out leaping in the fields?

It is February.  Usually our coldest month.....but today the grass is showing signs of green life and the leaves left on the ground are dry and there is no snow.  February is storm month.  Bad snow storms that bring several feet of snow and close roads and create snow days and make us very happy about skiing.  Alas we have had near zero snow.  The frost in the ground only lasts as long as it is cold, and is gone with the first rain.  No deep whore-frost this year.....nothing.....it is a mad winter drought. The energy of the land around me is very low.  It is not good.  We depend on stasis to survive winter here.  With no stasis the energy gets zapped out of the land.

I am feeling it.  My body wants to sleep.  It is the time I need to be most productive and it wants to reserve energy.  I honestly never thought I would see me complaining we needed it colder and whiter here.  Now I realize that my body is so attuned with this land in Canada that it is really suffering over the drought.  I bet many of you are experiencing the same thing.  What are you doing to combat the winter bla's ? Please leave me a comment on the Book Fanpage and let me know what you are doing to combat the winter bla's.

And Time Flies By

I have a promotion up on the Book's fan page.  I have coordinated with Pinpoint Social to do all the stats for the contest.  They are an up-and-coming Toronto company that have great ideas for promotion.  For little guys like me they have great trial programs that move into low cost tools.  For large companies they have the most competitive rates out there.  Basically they are the type of company that creates promotional contests or coupons promotions for advertizing.  They have developed aps for Facebook use and for the smart phones to be used in promotions.

I found out through their technical department that running promotions using ANY of the Facebook tools is actually illegal.  Pinpoint Social is highly intertwined with the working of Facebook Canada and they do promotions that do not break any of the Facebook terms of service. (eg.  LIKING a page on Facebook to win a prize is against the Facebook terms of service)

If you haven't headed over to the the Book fanpage in a while, please feel free to head on over and join the contest.  There is a chance for a free book, plus a coupon.

You will see the promotion contest icon in the left margin.  Thanks

Diplomacy Is Absolutely Necessary- The Social Media Experience

When someone chooses to become part of a Paranormal Investigation Team, the first thing they think of is to get the news of their work out there in the world.  The easiest way to do this is to use Social Media tools to do so.  There are quick notifications like Twitter, or socialization tools like Facebook.  Plus you can create a website or blog.

No matter what you choose I would like to give a bit of advice.  Every word you put out there on the internet is like a contract with the public.  Please....always think of how you may look if you spite someone in public. Talk about your passion, your experience, and your interest.   Don't use your forum to lay siege on someone else's theories.  If you are working to disprove a theory be diplomatic and  praise the other theorist for starting the ball rolling.  Explain how they inspired you to take your path into the work.  You should never run down anyone, or the validity of your work will fall short in folk's eyes.

Support is very important when you do Paranormal Investigations.  You want those who read your work to be as enthusiastic as you are.  You may inspire someone to try it out too.  You may even meet some new folks, or get to work with someone who is awesome because you wrote something that stimulated their interest in your work.  It does not matter how much great stuff you write about your passion of Paranormal Investigations.......you will always be remembered for the negative slur you made about someone, or the negative comment you made belittling another's work.

Treat folks on the internet kindly, and if you cannot be kind. Say nothing.
I know commentators can be horrible too.  You do not have to come down to their level, you can just delete the negative stuff if it effects you, or to make it even easier......don't allow comments at all.

Interesting People That I Work With

The "Three Musketeers" (or as we fondly call ourselves..."The Three Stooges").

Myself and two other great women are all sensitive to energy in different ways. Both of the other girls: Tere and Robin are lead investigators. We each bring a different perspective to the work.  I am all in the spirit realm for our investigations together because I know the girls have all the other energy stuff covered, so I am more at ease when I work in this team.

Robin is a historian, and a bit of a techno-geek.  She will know ever scrap of information about a place before we start. She is always armed with a GPS, Survey maps, printouts on Deeds and new histories from the place. Tere is a dowser.  She has a pendulum with her at all times.  She will help me if I need a bit more energy to pull info from a place's vibration.  Tere is also armed with an SLR camera.  She shoots tons of photos.

It is a guarantee we each will have a recording device.  Each one is different. So we can get a well rounded field of recordings.  We each will have a note pad as well.

The hidden participant (because he may not always be at an investigation, but his devices are at them) is John.  John is an investigator that is our inventor as well.  He is also a techno-geek.  He is really good at what he does.....Why?  Well it is because he doesn't just create a device.  He creates it with an idea that it has to be able to capture information that we could not capture before, or could not capture well before.  He addresses problems.  He looks at ways to disprove something as well as prove it.  It is way easier to disprove something using technical means.  Once he does that, it removes lots of data we don't need.  Then we can concentrate on the stuff that's left.  Once the data that is left is analyzed, John doesn't just accept the info we have left as important.....he then finds a way to break that information down so we are not just using a vague Sherlock Holmes type of reasoning to accept the end-products as fact.  He takes that data and rips it apart so we can find tangible evidence we could state is fact.  John's job is the most difficult.  He has to be able to get the real base data from a hodge-podge of sight and sound and then he has to figure out if he can re-create it in any way so it can be discarded.  Then he has to take the tiny pieces that seem tangible and prove how in different cases the results always end the same in specific types of events, and gather enough solid pieces of data in a list to be a history. Armed with enough evidence over enough time- those results change from hypothesis to fact based on productivity.