Hello to all my friends and readers. I’m very interested in reviews, including negative reviews.
In preparing for the imminent release of my newest book Perfect Prey, the sequel to The Trafficking Consortium, I’ve kept my eyes and ears open to anything that might apply to you, my readers, and all readers alike about why one buys and reads books.
Just a quick note to everyone. Since my last post, I’ve been very busy, mostly with family and friends. However, I’m now back, at least in spirit. My body is straining to keep up with my desires. That is, writing and keeping up with my friends and followers, all the stuff that makes my life worthwhile.
That said, since my return to work yesterday, I am mentally drained. Yes, that’s right, I’ve been off since last Thursday afternoon. At my job, I am responsible for various applications that are widely used within my client base. After testing several weeks ago an upgrade to this platform, I figured updating it yesterday would be a no-brainer. Over and done with, easy. Right? How wrong I was.
Instead of taking a total of three hours to implement and then another three hours to test, two days later, I’m still working on it. I figure I will complete the project tomorrow but one thing I do know, I will be calling the vendor once again. Yep, before I left today, I discovered something wrong that needs to be fixed before I can put the ‘DONE’ stamp on the project.
Yes, I know you probably don’t care about my concerns at work. However, it is affecting my ability to write and chat with you, my followers. When I got home yesterday, I felt so drained that it took a couple of scotches, dinner, and time in the hot tub before I felt a bit more relaxed. Early to bed and I slept the entire night, right through to the morning alarm. Great, as normally I’m up once or twice a night, and not for a trip to the head.
So why did I feel unrested as I got ready for work? And now after my shift and I’m home, I feel almost as bad as yesterday. I am once again, mentally drained, which makes me feel physically wiped out. “Hey, where’s that glass of scotch?” Or should I open a bottle of wine? Either way, something smooth will soon be passing across my tongue to chill out.
What does this all mean to my writing? Well, as it so happens, I’ve done little, and I’m stressing over it. Yet, I’m so mentally drained, I can’t seem to pick up where I left off. Sorry, everyone. I’m working hard, and I appreciate your patience.
So, I’m off to find a bit of downtime. I appreciate all that every one of you has done for me. A new exciting book will soon be released, and I’ve got another nearly ready to turn over to the editors. With notes on several story lines in the works, I need to get going.
Have a great day and a better tomorrow.
Rich
In my last article, I wrote about how I come up with my ideas for my books. I received several comments from people who read my books. I found them interesting.
The first comment comes from a reader who read my first book, ‘The Taste of Honey.’ At the time, this reader wrote me and, if I recall correctly, told me she had a hard time with the story. She considered herself to be a traditional, conservative person and didn’t read all that much. However, a friend turned her onto the book and while struggling with the storyline, discovered an underlying unexpected love story that she loved. It turned her around, and she eventually wrote a compelling five-star review.
The following is what I received in response to the article.
“I found it insightful as well as a confirmation of what I already felt in my heart was the way you find your inspirations. I’ve always believed you to be intelligent and extremely creative. It’s nice to see you finding the right outlet for that creativity (of which you do so well!).” jb
Apparently, she knows me well, and yes, I am acquainted with this person.
Another reader sent me this comment.
“It’s hard to understand how you can write that in such detail and emotion. And, not wonder about you. […] After reading your statements and seeing that your girlfriend felt the same way, I think I feel much better. Maybe, lol.” gd
I am only just becoming acquainted with this reader, having recently received several comments and messages regarding my ‘Her Client’ trilogy. After reading the first book, she contacted with a note indicating how much she liked it. After reading the second book, I received a second comment expressing the need “… to think about this one?” implying that the story might have been a bit over the top for her. [No surprise. This book is intentionally horrific and deals with the real monsters among us.] Her followup to this comment to this book inspired me to write my previous article. The last I heard, the reader was just starting the third book, ‘Her Essentia.’ I have little doubt that she will send me an additional note.
Interestingly enough, the ‘Her Client’ books are my best sellers. I never expected that to happen. As a result, those are the kinds of books I will continue to focus on as I write.
I received many comments on the article. I hope it helps you understand where I am coming from and where I am going. My stories don’t come from personal experiences. Rather, they come from observation and wondering, “what if …”.
That’s how my latest book, ‘The Trafficking Consortium’ came to life. I was at my doctor’s office and as I sat in the waiting room, wondered “what if someone behind the counter and sent the medical history of a patient to someone who had no right to the file?” From there, the pieces just fell into place, and Avril’s story came to life.
Then there’s ‘The Breakup’, a story about what a woman hopes will happen on a date of dinner and dancing. My ‘what if’ revolved around the word, dancing. “What was his definition of dancing?” Ginny is about to find out. The question is, will she be happy about it?
Overall, I don’t really know what to say. If you, my current and new followers, continue to read my books, what am I going to do but keep writing new ones that tickle your fancy and your emotions? I have notes on several ideas for future stories. Stay tuned.
Oh, and I almost forgot. I finally finished putting together my online art gallery. It’s called ‘maggicalExpressions.’ Links to it are on my book site.
Yes, that’s correct. I paint and draw when I need to disappear. Oh, yes, that’s what I do when I write. Well, it’s a different kind of medium, and I enjoy it. I hope you like them.
It’s a nice day today, blue sky, and lots of sun. I’m going to work on my book most of the day, and then I’m going to a party tonight. I can’t wait. It’s a themed party sponsored by a social club I belong to. It’s been way too long since I’ve attended one. I’m looking forward to it.
Have a great day and a better tomorrow.
Rich
Hello, all my fans and followers. Over the past few weeks, I’ve mentioned that I’ve worked on getting a story out of my head and written down.
I’m happy to announce that I finished it yesterday. At 92,000 words, it’s an interesting commentary on the human condition. I hope to turn it over for final editing by the end of the week, while I work on a cover design and the rest.
Be sure to look for it. It’s an erotic story about a woman who finds herself in an impossible situation, eventually forced to make a horrific choice to either sacrifice her soul and avoid an agonizing death or to save it and suffer the appalling consequences.
Both options are equally awful and unfair, yet she must choose her fate. If you liked ‘Her Client’ and ‘The Breakup,’ you’ll love this one.
Good afternoon all you fans. I write to you today as a frustrated writer who may now see the light at the end of the tunnel. Why do you ask?
Since August, most of my posts have failed to make it to my email followers. While it royally sucked, the resolution may be in the works.
The publishing company that handles distribution of my posts to all of my followers uploaded a patch to server yesterday. This company handles all distributions, including social media as well as my email subscribers. So far, two days in a row, my email followers have received my posts. Whoo hoo!
However, I must admit, I am still hesitant to say that they fixed the problem. Only time will tell.
One good thing that came out of all this. I was forced to find a simple type of post that followers would like to read, rather than just the same only ‘buy me’ crap that often happened. That is when I stumbled upon the Word of the Day feature. It’s a hit as I have received many positive responses to my posts. Most of the responses tell me that they particularly like the ‘My Take’ portion, which I love doing, and it doesn’t take a whole lot of time. Time that I am using to writing my next story.
So, be on the lookout for my next novel, that I hope to publish next month. It’s tentatively called ‘The Trafficking Consortium.’ The story is inline with the ‘Her Client’ but with many differences as well. If you liked any of my previous novels, you’ll love this one.
Now, a big thank you to everyone who is buying my books. Sales for the ‘Her Client’ series is phenomenal, as well as I have seen an increase in sales of my other books ‘The Taste of Honey,’ ‘Broken Steele,’ and ‘The Breakup.’ A big thank you to each and every one of you who bought and read them. Please, do me a favor. Write a review on the site from where you purchased the book(s). It would to a lot of good to get the word out.
Thanks for being patient with my publicizing problem. And, oh, by the way, winter is still here. Snow is on the ground as we had a record snowfall on Sunday, blowing the old record away by 300%. Wow. Now, if I could only blow away my sales by 300%, I could retire and write full-time. Hey, it’s all up to you, the reader. Thank you for your support.
After a very hot summer and a mild autumn, winter has finally arrived at my house. Friday and early Saturday, temperatures were in the low seventies. In fact, we broke an all time temperature record on Friday. Now, it’s in the low thirties, snow is covering the ground and wind is whipping it in a fury.
In preparation, last Friday I did all of the household grocery shopping and finished decorating the outside of the house for the holidays. Afterall, I’m done with hanging lights in subfreezing temperatures.
With chores done, I’m back at writing, trying to finish up my latest novel. The storyline magically appeared in my mind October 25. After months of a non-existent creative stream running through my consciousness, it returned with a bang, an entire story begging, no demanding release.
I am consumed with getting it out of my head, into a form you can enjoy it. In the spirit of ‘Her Client’ and ‘The Breakup’, this story follows the ordeals of my heroine as she deals with trials that she inconceivably is forced to deal with.
The book, tentatively titled ‘Trafficking Consortium,’ follows a woman who finds herself caught up in the world of human trafficking. A scourge on our society and a hated subject of my girlfriend, a centuries old élite organization discovers, pursues and kidnaps my protagonist, eventually selling her into a life of slavery and submission. Her new sadistic owner believes there is something special about her, and his consuming desire to have her, overwhelms her before starting to slide into a role of acceptance and submission, only to be shattered by a new demand he places upon her, her body and most importantly, her soul. A demand in which she, must choose between life and death. And don’t be fooled, it’s not an easy decision for her.
I can’t wait to finish this erotic and suspenseful story. If I stay on track, it should be released sometime in the next month. Of course, editing and book cover design may impact that schedule, with the world on the cusp of the holidays.
Thanks for following me. Now, back to the story.
This is Richard Verry, signing off for the time being so I can document my heroine’s fate.
Hello all,
Yesterday I wrote to you to let you know that I’m still here, and doing more than just posting my ‘Words of the Day’. Those posts are courtesy of Merriam-Webster, but instead of just reposting posts, I add my thoughts and my takes on the word. I try to find interesting imagery and commentary to support the term. Sometimes, I’ll just say, “I don’t know” and leave it at that. Sometimes, I’ll admit, that I never heard of the word before, or doubt that I will ever use it.
What I do find interesting, many words are already a part of my vocabulary or ones where I knew the meaning but not the word itself. Take for example, ‘triptych’. Since I was a young child, I knew of the style and structure of what the term referenced. After all, I grew up with artwork all around my home. Now I know its name. You can be sure that I will find the opportunity to use it.
***
Which brings me to the extra that I make available in these posts. If you share the post on Twitter, by clicking my Twitter button, you’ll receive a special, sexier image that I added for my Twitter followers. Try it and you’ll be helping me in the process.
***
On a different topic, I wrote about the publicizing of my posts to the various media outlets. Most of the time, my posts make it to my social media sites. Most of the time, my posts do not make it to my email subscribers. While I’m still upset by the situation, there is little I can do about it for the time being. All I can do is keep on nagging customer service.
Which brings me to their customer service, which I find is supportive and helpful, but their processes and background systems are extremely poor. I’ve worked help desk jobs before. Never in my career as an IT engineer had I ever worked with a system where an email by a customer, referencing their support ticket number would push that communication to the bottom of the queue. Any subsequent emails would push it back down once again. The only way of getting serviced is to send the mail and wait 48-72 business hours before a response.
Yet, I may have uncovered new data which may help the situation but if I try to communicate it to support, my message gets pushed down to the end of the queue. Frustrating to say the least.
Okay, I know I’m ranting, but if you’re interested in knowing who this vendor is, please send me a note.
***
I have verified that sending my posts later in the day has a greater level of success of those posts reaching my audience. So, it appears that I’ll have to shift the times I publish to later in the day. Apologies to you early risers or those from Europe and Asia. Rest assured; you’ll be able to read them when you wake up the next day.
***
No change on the concussion front, except my doctor has prescribed a new med which could take upwards of a month to determine whether it affects me or not. The nerve block barely made a dent so I’m hoping this has better success.
***
On top of it all, I just realized that my site is being attacked, probably with a denial of service attack, at least that is how it appears to me. On the phone right now with my hosting company. Wish me luck.
Per their recommendation, I am implementing tighter security on my site, which I probably should have done months ago. Who knew?
Update: I had to hold off publishing this post until the DOS attack resolved. I think it’s over now. The site appears to be behaving normally once again. Here’s to crossing my fingers.
***
I wrote a lot yesterday, finding an opportunity to take the novel from true first person perspective to include action from the antagonists. Soon, I’ll start writing more about this new novel.
Now, it’s time to get back to work. The novel is knocking on the inside of my skull, like a cat, demanding to open the door so it can be let out.
Thanks for reading. Have a great day and a better tomorrow.
p.s. I’ve included a bonus picture when you retweet this post using one of my Twitter buttons.
I know lately, all you have heard from me are my ‘Word of the Day’ posts. I didn’t mean for this to go on so long, my not sharing with you what is going on.
These last many months have been very strange for me. As you may recall, or not and that’s okay too, I suffered a severe concussion at work. That was in mid-July, and I’ve been out of work since then, as I’m still dealing with the after-effects. Now, mostly it’s the headaches and occasional short-term memory issue.
Then, in mid-August, my website began running into problems, which are still going today. It’s mid-November, and the vendor involved still hasn’t fixed it.
Apparently, I’m not alone with this problem, but I still had to involve my web hosting company and spend hundreds of hours on triaging the problem. Eventually, the company relented and reported that their email administrators had discovered a ‘race’ condition between their mail servers which affected me. I think that the servers are either overloaded or undersized. My tests seem to support that my posts that go out late in the day have a better chance of being delivered to my email subscribers than those that go out earlier in the day. That’s right. Not everyone is getting their mail sent to them. I received this note from them early this morning.
“I’ve let our developers know about this so they can investigate further.”
It’s the same problem that surfaced back in August, and they’re still dicking around with investigating the problem?
Another consequence of my concussion was that for a long time, I was unable to use my computers. Looking at the screen gave me severe headaches. While the headaches remain, I can now look at computer screens without making them worse.
I also suffered from cognitive thinking and short-term memory issues. What really disturbed me was that my continuous stream of creative thinking that was a part of my entire life … disappeared. For months, the imagery that was so much a part of me was gone. I felt like I lost a lover, a friend, a companion, and … well … me.
I tried to encourage its return by editing my first draft of ‘Lucky Bitch’, the third book in my Mona Bendarova Series. That went okay for a while until I discovered that I had to rewrite the ending. I noticed that I had written much of the material included in the last couple of chapters in the first third of the book. What the fuck? I reached out to my beta readers asking for some help, which they graciously gave. However, without a creative stream of thoughts, I couldn’t rewrite the ending, so I put it aside for the time being. Shit. It’s going to be a full year since I published the second book in the series, ‘Broken Steele’. Shit, but I know that there is nothing I can do about it.
So, I kept working on restarting my creative stream. I’m happy to say, about three weeks ago, the creative stream suddenly flared back with a passion. In an instant, a fully formed idea for a new novel, from start to finish, flashed into my mind, demanding release.
Since then, I have been writing up a storm. I’m consumed with trying to get the novel out of my soul and down in print. Every day since late October, I write. Sometimes, only a few thousands of words get written down but often, I get ten thousand or more out. I’ve haven’t checked recently, but I think I’m over 100k words right now and still going.
It’s wonderful to have the stream back. My live-in girlfriend is at times upset with me as I bury myself in my office and write. In the afternoons and evenings, I’ll sit with her. She controls the TV remote while I pick up my laptop and write. She understands but still feels ignored. It’s a delicate balance but the consuming need to express myself outweighs the need to help her feel comfortable. Later that evening, I will put the laptop down and fully dedicate my time to her.
So, I hope to have this new novel out by the end of the year, but we’ll see. It will need severe editing, as I don’t trust my mind right now to keep all of the characters and timings straight. Automatic spell and grammar checking are fantastic, but there are many things they cannot catch.
One thing I have noticed as I write, sometimes I’ll think of a word I intend to write only to look up at the screen and see an entirely different word. Huh? How did I think ‘dog’ and write ‘dolphin’ or ‘plane?’ Yes, it happens, and I can’t seem to correct it. Perhaps my physical therapy which starts next week will help with that. Frankly, I think just writing will ultimately solve that. I just hope that I don’t pass on an incongruous thought to you in my writing. And if I do, I trust that you’ll forgive me.
I had fun looking for images related to my issues. I hope you like the ones I chose, as well as the sexy bonus pic you will get if you share this post via Twitter.
Right now, I need to get back to my novel. Parts of it are still up there in that noggin of mine, demanding a release from its captivity inside my skull. You’ll forgive me if I stop now and return to my novel.
This is Richard Verry, writing to you from my home office. Thanks for caring. I appreciate all of the kind words people have sent to me over these past several months.
What is gratitude? The way I see it, it is being thankful for someone or something that enriched a person’s life. The way I feel when I see people buying my books. Thank you. You are all awesome. A special thank you to those that recently purchased ‘The Taste of Honey‘ and ‘Broken Steele‘. I really appreciate it. Be sure to look for the third book in the series, ‘Lucky Bitch‘, coming soon.
I would be especially grateful if after reading my books, you would post a review. Reviews are the lifeblood of a book. I appreciate each and every one of them.
Plus, sales aside, reviews lift my spirits and soothe my soul. Thank you for your kindness and your review.
A new fantastic review of ‘The Taste of Honey’ appeared on Amazon the other day. Thank you Reenie K for your comments. I do appreciate them. BTW, I hope your prophecy comes true. Wouldn’t that be something. Gotta keep writing, that’s all there is to it.
I also want to thank all of my readers out there who continue to buy my books. It’s really nice to see the sales charts documenting all of the hits. What’s really cool is to see the numbers not just from Amazon but the other eBook retailers out there, including Smashwords, Barnes & Noble, iBooks, Kobo to name a few. Thank you to each and everyone of you.
Thanks too to my loving girlfriend and partner in crime. She puts up with a lot to help me get these posts and stories out. I have two projects going at once and sometimes, I hole up in my office writing, leaving her to wander the rest of the house doing who knows what.
After months of little rain, we finally experienced significant rain as well as a few thunderstorms over the last couple of days. It is a welcome relief. I love my thunderstorms. Every chance I get, I sit in the safety of my garage and watch the light show around me as the wind drives bullet sized rain onto the ground. Weather wise, I love living in the northeast U.S. Our weather is mild compared to the rest of the country yet diverse enough that I am never bored.
Finally, a quick report. A month ago tomorrow, as many of you know, I suffered a severe concussion. I saw a galaxy of stars in that moment. While I am progressing, I am still not past it yet. Constant headaches, fatigue and short term memory loss are still an issue. I am back to work, though on half days. That’s good. I need the job to support my writing. I see Doc again this week and I can’t help wonder what will come out the other side. Crossing my fingers.
It’s been a good week overall and I am looking forward to the coming weeks ahead. How about you? Are you in a good space? Either way, feel free to comment. I look forward to reading them. I am Richard Verry, reporting to you from my home office, drinking my first cup of coffee. Delish.
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