|
June 29, 2004 Check it out! Sweetpeas! I've got to get Eric to the river this week! He worked yesterday and got the flat tire fixed on the car ($60 later, yikes). He wasn't able to register the motorcycle because there is something like $360 in back registration owed on it (the previous owner claimed it had fallen off the books and would only require current registration, but the DMV endeavored to persevere), so needless to say, it's still unregistered. Today, he's helping David (my son) move. Dave has been burned on the rent by his previous two roommates (I don't think the kid has gotten a full month's rent from anyone in about 6 months) and he is now moving into a four bedroom townhouse with three college girls. I told him we would now have to change his name to Jack Tripper. I hope he can handle it. He said he fully expected to start menstruating next month. His current two bedroom apartment is $600 a month plus utilities (for two, since they haven't paid that either) and this will only be $275 a month plus 1/4 of the utilities. He won't have as much space for his personal use, but he'll save a lot of money. He works for Ticketmaster in a call center at absolutely hates it. I'm trying like mad to manifest something else for him. When we moved here, he spent DAYS helping us lug stuff, so Eric is his muscle today. Good lord, this house is quiet when kids are sleeping! After yesterday's column, I was flooded with e-mails from people asking how to become a book reviewer, so I'll just answer everyone here. First, it's not a paid job. You basically work for the books, which suits me just fine. Books are a passion for me and this lets me get them without a financial investment. You have to have a place to publish the reviews (for most publishers). Mine is The Diva Digest, another website that I own and run. www.thedivadigest.com. All of my publishers (I do about 5) are, for the most part, Witchy publishers. I also do some books on Women's Studies and inspirational books. Very nearly every publisher will have a website with a page of contacts or an FAQ. Sometimes, you have to dig for it. For instance, a lot of people know Penguin Books. It's a subcompany of Putnam Press. I had to navigate their site on trial and error for about 5-6 minutes to find this page: http://us.penguingroup.com/static/packages/us/about/contact.htm#REVIEW It seems to be in a different place for every publisher. You then fax (with company letterhead) a letter to publicity editor for the company, introducing yourself and your website, online magazine, non-online periodical or whatever, and list the books you want to review. It can take months for them to get back to you. Penguin has never replied to me, but they're an easy example to use because nearly everyone knows them. What I do is go into a book store and write down the author, title and publisher for a book I want to read. It's easier to get review copies of new books than older ones. Some publishers are very open and enthusiastic about new reviewers and others are more snobby. One of my companies, Element Books, Fed-Ex'd me the books from England and I received them the day after I sent the fax! I've literally gotten thousands of dollars worth of books, tarot decks, calendars and datebooks and such just for providing a literate, objective, well-written review. It's a very exciting thing for me, but it IS time consuming. You can see from this: http://www.thedivadigest.com/divabooks.htm the number of book reviews I've done in a year or so. A friend of mine did a few of them on this page as well. I've got about 20-30 more to go and between all of the publishers, I have ordered about 83 more books from their new fall-winter preview catalogs. Sometimes, once you've reviewed for a while, companies will just send you a book and say, "Will you consider reviewing this?" I have also met some WONDERFUL people in the publicity departments of the publishing houses. So if you're interested, all you can do is go for it and see what happens. I've been very lucky and during the darkest times, this has allowed me to indulge in my passion for books and reading without breaking the bank. Also, many local papers and periodicals will include book reviews in their content, so it can help to call them and ask if they are interested in having a book review section. Thinking about this prompted me to update the pertinent sections on The Diva Digest. It's such a nice place to hang out, but sadly, it often gets pushed aside on the to do list. My dog is being such a jerk. He's really just being a puppy, but it makes me crazy. He chases the kids, just bit Nathan on the belly, so Nathan is all weepy (but won't let me put any Solarcaine on it), he's eating my pigs, stealing my shoes and is just a pain. Eric has offered to find another home for him, but the kids would be devastated and I'd feel like a failure. This is exactly why I didn't want to get a puppy. I discipline him all through the day, but his little puppy brain just isn't ready for memory retention, evidently. I swear, he takes up about half of my energy output in any given day. I can't believe that I'm still so tired. After I wrote yesterday, I went upstairs to relax and watch TV. The kids were being good and Nathan had not yet set about losing his mind as he was evidently destined to do in the later afternoon (yeeks). As soon as my body reclined, I fell off the cliff into a deep and desperate sleep. Thank goodness one of the kids woke me up about 20 minutes later or I likely would have been down for the afternoon. My kids still aren't old enough, well, Nathan isn't old enough, to be left completely unmonitored, so that was a good thing. I went to sleep around 10pm and got up at 6:30 this morning. Despite that respectable amount of good sleep, I still feel really drained. Any more, I think I need double the amount of lost sleep to compensate and feel normal again. Today will be a down day, I have determined. I need to recover. I need books and a remote control and I'll be complete. I just can't zonk out this time. :) Take care,
|
