Potpourri, and Not That Smelly Stuff Some Cheap Jerk Bought You for XMas

This is going to be pretty much the last random post for a while, so I'm going to get my money's worth.

The "Secret" of Mega-Selling Authors...Is Not Really a Secret 👎

The Washington Post posted this article about mega-selling authors, supposedly unraveling why they sell so much.  The answer?  They write books.  With, like characters and plots and stuff.  Whoa!  That's so innovative!

Look, most writers write a bunch (OK, maybe not GRR Martin) with plots and characters people find interesting.  The difference between why some sell and others don't is just mostly luck whether we want to admit it or not.  A lot of them like Stephen King, John Grisham, Dan Brown or even my own hero John Irving did not find instant fame and fortune.  They had a few books do meh and then eventually one got people's notice and from there people started buying their other books.  As I've said before, there's really no secret formula.

Scammers Could Use Some Help Writing Their Emails💩

I forget where, but I saw an ad somewhere saying you could get $400 a week to have your car wrapped in advertising.  So I clicked the link because why not?  I filled in the form and sent it in.  A few days later I got this largely nonsensical email:

Good Morning, 

How are you today, Hope your having a great day. We want to firstly
apologize for the the sudden information. I just received an update from my
financier that the payment has been issued out and it will deliver
Thursday or Friday.

You can Track on www.usps.com

Here is the USPS tracking # (9405501699320098951485).

The check covers an upfront payment for you, The payment of the
graphic artist coming to wrap your vehicle and the materials suitable
to wrap your vehicle. Get the check deposited into your bank account,
The funds will be made available to you, Take out an upfront payment
of ($400) And send the remainder money to the graphic artist via Walmart to Walmart Transfer.

The graphic artist will be coming to your house to put the wrap on
your vehicle, She will be coming to your place as
soon as she receives the money sent to get your vehicle wrapped. Your
weekly payment continues next week and subsequent payments will be
$400 only. The artist will bring every necessary paperwork and rights
you need to have to carry the advert. We do not directly pay the
artist for a couple of reasons;  One of which is the that we
discovered the applicants are not ready when the artist gets to their
house, So we device the means of having the applicants send the money
to the artist to indicate their readiness. Checks of applicants who
fails to follow instructions will be canceled 3 DAYS AFTER DELIVERY DATE.


This is the information of the graphic artist to send the money via WALMART TO WALMART TRANSFER

NAME:         Samantha Torres
ADDRESS:   1062 coral desert drive
CITY:            Las Vegas
STATE:         Nevada
ZIP:              89123

There is a transfer charge at the store, Take out the transfer charges
and get the remainder sent to her.. Send a pic of theTransfer receipt when your done.

Looking forward to reading from you.

Acknowledge receipt of this email immediately.

Kind Regards.

First off, you can tell it was written by someone who speaks English as a second language just by the poor grammar.  The first sentence ends with a comma instead of a period.  The second sentence uses the wrong form of "your" (as do other places).  It just screams "Nigerian Prince Scam!"  Secondly, the whole narrative doesn't make much sense.  I get a check for $1600 and I wire $1200 to some girl in Las Vegas who will then wrap my car (in Michigan) in advertising?

The first question is:  why don't YOU just pay her?  They offer some lame excuse about me sending her the money will show that I'm ready.  What?  I can't just send a text, email, or use the phone to set up an appointment?  I have to send her money to show I'm ready?  Does that make any sense?  The second question is:  Las Vegas?  She's going to go all the way from Vegas to Detroit for one stupid job that'll probably take an hour or two?  I mean there aren't any other graphic artists between Detroit and Vegas?

Of course all of this is a scam.  Here's how it works:  I get the check, cash the check, wire the money, and then a few days later, guess what?  THE CHECK BOUNCES!  Then I'm out the $2400 I wired, plus NSF fees, plus probably overdraft fees, so I end up not only without the $800 I'm supposed to get, but also losing pretty much everything I have.

So you don't have to tell me it's a scam because I know that.  The point is that if this dude wants his scam to be believable, he could use some writing help.  Professional grammar is a good start.  Then a narrative that makes sense.  Like not having your operative based in fucking Las Vegas when the job is in Detroit.  And saying I should send the money to the "artist" to signal I'm ready?  That makes no sense whatsoever.  Find a better excuse.  Sure this can work, just like infomercials and junk mail work:  you throw enough shit at the wall and some of it is bound to stick.  It would probably work more often if you crafted a better email.

The other giveaway was they sent two checks at the same time with two different companies listed on them.  If the crap in that email wasn't a tipoff, those checks pretty much gave the game away.  I mean it's not like Penske Corporation would be paying me through two different companies, would they?  They'd have one central office for that shit.

Spoiler Space:  The Phantom Menace😠🚀

An article from Comic Book Resources popped up in my Facebook feed a couple of weeks ago.  It was saying that in an early draft of Rogue One, Jyn's mother was a Force user.  So I made the innocuous comment that then Jyn could be Rey's mother in Episode VIII, not really being serious about it.

So this ass named Roger Johnson has to get on his high horse and start fansplaining

this takes place 30-35 years before Force Awakens, Rey would of had to have been born ten years after Rogue One.... and everyone did die at the end of the movie according the darth vader

Um, spoilers, jerk?

 No, of course not.  

how is that spoilers... it says during the title crawl of A New Hope that everyone dies.... this isnt rocket science Patrick Dilloway

Like the ending of the movie is spoiled literally during the opening credits of the first ever Star Wars movie

Except it's not in the crawl!  This is the actual crawl:

Episode IV: A NEW HOPE
"It is a period of civil war. Rebel spaceships, striking from a hidden base, have won their first victory against the evil Galactic Empire.
During the battle, Rebel spies managed to steal secret plans to the Empire's ultimate weapon, the DEATH STAR, an armored space station with enough power to destroy an entire planet.
Pursued by the Empire's sinister agents, Princess Leia races home aboard her starship, custodian of the stolen plans that can save her people and restore freedom to the galaxy...."

Where the fuck does that say that the spies died?  NOWHERE!  Well of course he has to try again:

fine it doesnt say it specifically in the crawl.... but i know for a fact it is mentioned in the movie that the rogue one team died sending the plans to leia. like this has been known since before the movie was released in theaters. They beamed the plans before they were killed.. thats how vader knows leia has them

again, if you have seen A New Hope, then you already knew the outcome of the movie. I am not gonna apologize because you cant fucking comprehend a movie trilogy that has had its history wide out in the open for about 40 years

I finally put in the goddamned movie to watch it.  And no, it never says the spies died.  It only says that Leia received a transmission and that Vader traced it to her ship.  You'd think maybe the jerk would finally own up to spoiling the ending of Rogue One.  Nah.  He just kept it going and kept it going.

Vader clearly said Leia was the only link he had to the rebel base after he traced the spies to her

HE TRACED THE SPIES TO HER MEANING HE FOUND THEM AND FOUND WHO THEY SENT THE TRANSMISSION TOO

IF she is the only link, that means the others are dead.....

again, three minutes into the movie... right as he is talking to princess leia

First of all it's not "3 minutes into the movie" that Vader talks to Leia; it's more like 10 minutes.  And again, he only says that he traced the transmission to her ship.  That doesn't mean anyone died.  Spies send transmissions without dying all the freaking time!  As I tried to explain to him, that's kind of a spy's job.

Then of course someone else has to get in on it: 

 Jay Abbit:  We've known these characters died since it was mentioned offhandedly in A New Hope in 1977. 

GAH!!  No one said it "offhandedly" or any other way!!!  You fucking morons!!!!  Just admit you posted spoilers already!!!!! Or at least just shut the fuck up and go away!!!!!!

Honestly, sometimes I'm so fucking ashamed of sci-fi fans.  This know-it-all bullshit in response to what was a fucking joke.  And then not being able to either fess up or just STFU.  The mental fucking gymnastics trying to prove that he was right; it was as bad as arguing with Jay Greenstein.

More Adventures in Self-Publishing

Recently someone wrote this on Transformed for Summer Too:

This could be a halfway decent story if the writer left their politics at the gate. Meh, least it's KU so I didn't spend cash on it

 My thought was:  what politics?  This is a story about a dad who goes undercover as a woman at a summer camp to keep an eye on his daughter and then a killer shows up ala Friday the 13th.  What the hell is political about that?  I could see if you said that about The Hot Girl in the Bathroom, which was about the "bathroom law" in places like North Carolina, but there was nothing political about this!  I put it on sale for free so I could easily download a copy and review it.  The only "political" thing I could see is I mention a character "froze like W Bush on 9/11."  It would seem pretty lame to give a book 1 star for that.

I goofed originally when I loaded Naughty or Nice 2.  On PowerPoint I used an Eric Filler cover as the template for it.  Except I forgot to change the name to my other pseudonym, Ivana Johnson.  The infamous "John Daniels" wrote a 2-star review complaining about this.  Not that the name on the cover should really ruin your enjoyment of the text inside.  That poor fool thinks he's such an expert on Eric Filler and he didn't even know Eric Filler's real name.  Sad!  Hopefully by now Amazon has actually updated the cover on the page.