Wednesday, July 18, 2007

MASS CONFUSION by Morgan Mandel

I've entered another period of mass confusion. These things happen sometimes. At the moment I'm wearing so many hats it's hard to keep them from falling off.

After taking videos at our 4th of July parade, I converted them into movies. Although the project files looked fine, after they were produced as movies, they turned out a bit blurry.

I hoped that maybe the MovieMaker software wasn't adequate, or perhaps corrupted and it was not my videocamera, so I purchased EasyMedia Creator 9 from Roxio. I have some knowledge but am not an expert about computers by any means. After spending some frustrating hours with the new software, I learned it did not support capturing my mini-dv format. Also, their editing software would not accept the MovieMaker movies. I wasted time, effort and money on that project and am kicking around the idea of just buying a better videocamera.

My new book, Girl of My Dreams, is coming out in January, so I decided to give it another look to be ready for the editing process. I was horrified to find mistakes I'd glided over before. I'm glad I took another look.

I purchased an electronic business card from Vistaprint to advertise the new book, but it only works from Outlook or Outlook Express. Now I'm trying to figure out how to configure one of them so I can send outgoing messages, but not receive. Already when I tried, Outlook Express grabbed some of my messages and threw it into its program. I like my A T & T setup with the spam filter and don't want to lose it, so this has to be corrected.

Anyway, I'm doing a speech on my vacation on Tuesday, July 24, 2007, from 6:30-8pm at the Minocqua Public Library about How to Get Published and What Happens Afterwards, so I've been getting that ready as I ride the train to and from my day job. It's taking longer than I thought since I keep thinking of more things to say and wanting to include them.

In the midst of all this, I've received disturbed messages from other authors on the various loops about the new RWA and MWA qualifications.

To make matters more interesting, I've also set up a blog at http://mysteryturtles.blogspot.com/
for all of us Hard Shell Word Factory mystery authors to share our thoughts and experiences.

By the way, did I mention I need to pack for vacation and print up more business cards?

Somehow it will all fall into place, but right now it's hard to tell how. Mass confusion in the life of an author.

Morgan Mandel
http://www.morganmandel.com/
http://bookplace.ning.com/
http://acmeauthorslink.blogspot.com/
http://mysteryturtles.blogspot.com/
http://myspace.com/morganmandel

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