It was while listening to NPR last Tuesday with my son soundly buckled into the backseat that I first heard about The Swine Flu. Three Southern California children had been diagnosed with this virus previously unseen in humans the report claimed. My son immediately got upset. “I don’t want to get the swine flu!” he cried.
“Then don’t play with pigs,” I replied lightly. It wasn’t that I wanted to mock the plight of the three ill children but I didn’t want to alarm my son. Besides while it was true that the cases had been found in a town not too far from mine all the infected children were reportedly on their way to a full recovery and I certainly wasn’t going to freak myself out over three isolated cases.
By Thursday the cases had crept up to seven. Six were in Southern California and one of them was the boy that my son does martial arts with. That’s when the alarm bells went off in my head. But of course no one was dying. The boy’s mother told me he was almost completely better. Besides, my son hadn’t seen him for a week at that point and he still wasn’t showing any signs of illness so I figured it would all be okay…although it did bother me when that day the martial arts instructor canceled class because his son had suddenly come down with something. Still, no one was dying.
And that’s when the news broke about what was going on in Mexico. I was never all that worried about the Avian flu. Yes, I know Avian flu is dangerous but I also know that the odds of us getting it have always been pretty low. It’s true that 700 people died worldwide from SARS but there are almost 7 BILLION people in the world. That means that unless you were in an affected area you had a better chance of winning the lottery than dying of SARS.
But now I live in an affected area. I’m still not overly concerned. Again, in America this doesn’t appear to be fatal and even in Mexico they’re saying that many of the people who died could have been saved if they had gone to the hospital earlier. Still, this possible pandemic is much closer to home than previous ones and tonight when my son started complaining of stomach upset and a headache I started hovering a little more than normal. Once again it’s way too early to panic since he was with my mother for the morning and afternoon. After I told her he was feeling ill she admitted to a list of junk food items that she allowed him to consume throughout the day (for the record when I was a kid she NEVER let me have junk food. I didn’t even get to taste Skippy peanut butter until I was in Jr. High).
Anyway, my point is I’m watching the news and my son very closely these days. If nothing else this has taught me to be more vigilant about not leaving the house without my antibacterial wipes.
Kyra Davis
Bestselling Author of:
The Sophie Katz Murder Mystery Seris,
and
SO MUCH FOR MY HAPPY ENDING
Pre-order LUST, LOATHING AND A LITTLE LIP GLOSS on Amazon or Barnesandnoble.com today!
Sunday, April 26, 2009
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
The Brits Are Different Than You And Me
After last week’s Susan Boyle phenomenon I found myself wondering, “What exactly is Britain’s Got Talent?” Is it really just like American Idol? What are the contestants competing for? What kinds of people usually audition?
So this weekend I utilized the best research tool I know of, YouTube. I found out that the contestants are competing for money and the chance to perform in front of the royal family. I also watched a video of the child musical prodigy who will give Susan a run for her money. SheeHeen JefarGholi is an adorable and extraordinarily talented 12-year-old boy who lives with his single mom. He’s exactly the kind of kid you would expect to see on an American talent competition. Then there was a teen whose big talent involves doing tricks with a soccer ball. It didn’t go well. Again, I can see some American producers giving this guy airtime as a bit of a joke although I’d like to think that the networks here might be reticent to humiliate a 16 year-old. Americans usually like to save the public embarrassments for those who are 18 and up…Miley Cyrus being the notable exception.
But what really got me was the OTHER act that performed this last Saturday night; this would be the same episode that the twelve year old and teen performed in. The woman who took my breath away was Fabia Cerra, a full figured stay-at-home mom who wants to revitalize her dream of becoming a professional dancer. So she stepped up on the stage and did a full-blown striptease. She literally got all the way down to her pasties. When one of her pasties fell off they “censored it” for the TV audience by superimposing British Flags over her boobs. Furthermore the judges actually approved and passed her on to compete in the next round.
I could be wrong, but I don’t see this happening on a family show in the States. It’s just one more reason to love the Brits. They have such an interesting duality of character: there’s the Queen and then there are the strippers in pasties.
It’s really quite smashing.
Kyra Davis
Bestselling Author of:
The Sophie Katz Murder Mystery Series,
and
SO MUCH FOR MY HAPPY ENDING
Pre-order LUST, LOATHING AND A LITTLE LIP GLOSS on Amazon or Barnesandnoble.com today!
So this weekend I utilized the best research tool I know of, YouTube. I found out that the contestants are competing for money and the chance to perform in front of the royal family. I also watched a video of the child musical prodigy who will give Susan a run for her money. SheeHeen JefarGholi is an adorable and extraordinarily talented 12-year-old boy who lives with his single mom. He’s exactly the kind of kid you would expect to see on an American talent competition. Then there was a teen whose big talent involves doing tricks with a soccer ball. It didn’t go well. Again, I can see some American producers giving this guy airtime as a bit of a joke although I’d like to think that the networks here might be reticent to humiliate a 16 year-old. Americans usually like to save the public embarrassments for those who are 18 and up…Miley Cyrus being the notable exception.
But what really got me was the OTHER act that performed this last Saturday night; this would be the same episode that the twelve year old and teen performed in. The woman who took my breath away was Fabia Cerra, a full figured stay-at-home mom who wants to revitalize her dream of becoming a professional dancer. So she stepped up on the stage and did a full-blown striptease. She literally got all the way down to her pasties. When one of her pasties fell off they “censored it” for the TV audience by superimposing British Flags over her boobs. Furthermore the judges actually approved and passed her on to compete in the next round.
I could be wrong, but I don’t see this happening on a family show in the States. It’s just one more reason to love the Brits. They have such an interesting duality of character: there’s the Queen and then there are the strippers in pasties.
It’s really quite smashing.
Kyra Davis
Bestselling Author of:
The Sophie Katz Murder Mystery Series,
and
SO MUCH FOR MY HAPPY ENDING
Pre-order LUST, LOATHING AND A LITTLE LIP GLOSS on Amazon or Barnesandnoble.com today!
Thursday, April 16, 2009
Publishers Weekly Likes My Sophie!
Publishers Weekly came out with their review for Lust, Loathing and A Little Lip Gloss and it’s a good one! They say that my “otherworldly” new novel has “Humor, romance and an appealing, spirited protagonist.”
So that’s good and I’m happy….and it doesn’t really mean a lot. Publishers Weekly is a respected trade magazine among booksellers and publishers but they can’t make or break me. Only you can do that. That’s why I do hope that you’ll all participate in my contest. Remember, when you review Lust, Loathing And A Little Lip Gloss in your blog or on a bookseller's website or when you post a book trailer on Youtube or even when you have me speak to your book club via speaker phone you’ll earn a chance to win a trip to SF and a whole lot more! Obviously I want you to help promote the book, furthermore I want you to feel some ownership of the book because in many ways Sophie is yours as much as she ever was mine. But beyond that I want to know what you have to say. When it comes to my books yours is the only opinion that matters.
Anyway, for those of you who want to know about the contest check out my website and be sure to preorder your books so you can start entering the contest right on June 1st. If you don’t like ordering online or have a favorite independent bookstore you like to shop at go to that store and preorder Lust, Loathing And A Little Lip Gloss through them. You should get it just as quickly.
On a totally different note: For those of you who spent your preschool years watching the Muppets (as I did) I posted a Muppet video on my Facebook page that made me smile. Sometimes it’s the simple things.
Kyra Davis
Bestselling Author of:
The Sophie Katz Murder Mystery Series,
and
SO MUCH FOR MY HAPPY ENDING
Pre-order LUST, LOATHING AND A LITTLE LIP GLOSS on Amazon or Barnesandnoble.com today!
So that’s good and I’m happy….and it doesn’t really mean a lot. Publishers Weekly is a respected trade magazine among booksellers and publishers but they can’t make or break me. Only you can do that. That’s why I do hope that you’ll all participate in my contest. Remember, when you review Lust, Loathing And A Little Lip Gloss in your blog or on a bookseller's website or when you post a book trailer on Youtube or even when you have me speak to your book club via speaker phone you’ll earn a chance to win a trip to SF and a whole lot more! Obviously I want you to help promote the book, furthermore I want you to feel some ownership of the book because in many ways Sophie is yours as much as she ever was mine. But beyond that I want to know what you have to say. When it comes to my books yours is the only opinion that matters.
Anyway, for those of you who want to know about the contest check out my website and be sure to preorder your books so you can start entering the contest right on June 1st. If you don’t like ordering online or have a favorite independent bookstore you like to shop at go to that store and preorder Lust, Loathing And A Little Lip Gloss through them. You should get it just as quickly.
On a totally different note: For those of you who spent your preschool years watching the Muppets (as I did) I posted a Muppet video on my Facebook page that made me smile. Sometimes it’s the simple things.
Kyra Davis
Bestselling Author of:
The Sophie Katz Murder Mystery Series,
and
SO MUCH FOR MY HAPPY ENDING
Pre-order LUST, LOATHING AND A LITTLE LIP GLOSS on Amazon or Barnesandnoble.com today!
Monday, April 13, 2009
The Power Of The Tweet (And Amazon's Evil...um...glitch)
Even after I joined the world of Twitter there was a little part of me that thought the whole thing was ridiculous.
Not anymore. It’s true that a lot of trivial and mundane information is passed around Twitter but it’s also true that it is now a social networking site with the power to change seriously misguided policies of corporate conglomerates.
To explain I’m going to have to bash Amazon for a moment here which I do with a certain amount of trepidation. Slamming Amazon a few months before my book is scheduled for release could conceivably have some not so happy consequences. But I also have long been an advocate for gay rights and as a black, Jewish, single mom I have a hard time sitting back and watching a minority group (even if it’s one of the few minority groups I can’t lay claim to) gets screwed over. I’m also not a really big fan of censorship. So with all that said:
This weekend Amazon experienced what they are calling a “glitch.” According to Amazon they had intended to remove the rankings from all erotic fiction and other “adult” books with pornographic content. This means that a book from say, Susie Bright (who writes erotica for a mostly female and gay demographic) could never be found on an Amazon bestseller list no matter how well it does. It also means that her books will occasionally not show up on a general search AT ALL. Instead you would have to specifically go to the “erotic fiction” link to find her.
Amazon can make an argument for the validity of this decision although I think it’s a thin one since Playboy Redheads (an adult, photograph-filled book clearly aimed at straight men) apparently isn’t offensive enough to lose IT’S ranking.
But it gets worse. The mysterious “glitch” managed to classify EVERY book that has a gay protagonist as an “adult” book unworthy of a ranking. It was the most discriminating of glitches because while it managed to remove the ranking of every Gay book with the world “homosexual” in the title it did not remove the ranking of Dark Obsession: The Tragedy And Threat Of the Homosexual Lifestyle. The “glitch” was also able to ferret out such books as Orlando by Virginia Woolf and Running With Scissors written by Augusten Burroughs. Both books have a gay or transgender protagonist and both had their rankings removed.
It was noticed by Mark R. Probst; a self-published, gay author. When he emailed Amazon to ask why his other gay books had lost their rankings a customer service rep (who had also apparently been affected by the glitch) told him the books were classified by the company as “adult” and thus would not receive sales rankings.
He blogged about it but of course self-published authors rarely have the biggest microphone and people are less likely to read blogs on the weekend anyway.
And then one person who read the blog decided to post a link to it on Twitter. And then another person wrote and tweeted and another and another. Pretty soon it was all over the twittersphere. Within hours the LA Times had picked up the story, then the Seattle Post Intelligencer, then Entertainment Weekly and The Wall Street Journal and by the end of Sunday GLAAD (Gay And Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation) was on board and demanding answers. Somewhere between the slew of complaint emails and GLAAD Amazon decided that they had glitched up. This morning they corrected the problem and gay fiction (including Virginia Woolf) can be found on a regular search.
It’s kind of amazing what a boatload of 140 character tweets can do.
By the way, Susie Bright still doesn’t get a ranking and Playboy Redheads still does. Guess you can’t have everything…unless you shop at Barnes And Noble or a fair minded independent bookseller.
Kyra Davis
Bestselling Author of:
The Sophie Katz Murder Mystery Series,
and
SO MUCH FOR MY HAPPY ENDING
Pre-order LUST, LOATHING AND A LITTLE LIP GLOSS on Barnesandnoble.com or Indiebound.com today!
Not anymore. It’s true that a lot of trivial and mundane information is passed around Twitter but it’s also true that it is now a social networking site with the power to change seriously misguided policies of corporate conglomerates.
To explain I’m going to have to bash Amazon for a moment here which I do with a certain amount of trepidation. Slamming Amazon a few months before my book is scheduled for release could conceivably have some not so happy consequences. But I also have long been an advocate for gay rights and as a black, Jewish, single mom I have a hard time sitting back and watching a minority group (even if it’s one of the few minority groups I can’t lay claim to) gets screwed over. I’m also not a really big fan of censorship. So with all that said:
This weekend Amazon experienced what they are calling a “glitch.” According to Amazon they had intended to remove the rankings from all erotic fiction and other “adult” books with pornographic content. This means that a book from say, Susie Bright (who writes erotica for a mostly female and gay demographic) could never be found on an Amazon bestseller list no matter how well it does. It also means that her books will occasionally not show up on a general search AT ALL. Instead you would have to specifically go to the “erotic fiction” link to find her.
Amazon can make an argument for the validity of this decision although I think it’s a thin one since Playboy Redheads (an adult, photograph-filled book clearly aimed at straight men) apparently isn’t offensive enough to lose IT’S ranking.
But it gets worse. The mysterious “glitch” managed to classify EVERY book that has a gay protagonist as an “adult” book unworthy of a ranking. It was the most discriminating of glitches because while it managed to remove the ranking of every Gay book with the world “homosexual” in the title it did not remove the ranking of Dark Obsession: The Tragedy And Threat Of the Homosexual Lifestyle. The “glitch” was also able to ferret out such books as Orlando by Virginia Woolf and Running With Scissors written by Augusten Burroughs. Both books have a gay or transgender protagonist and both had their rankings removed.
It was noticed by Mark R. Probst; a self-published, gay author. When he emailed Amazon to ask why his other gay books had lost their rankings a customer service rep (who had also apparently been affected by the glitch) told him the books were classified by the company as “adult” and thus would not receive sales rankings.
He blogged about it but of course self-published authors rarely have the biggest microphone and people are less likely to read blogs on the weekend anyway.
And then one person who read the blog decided to post a link to it on Twitter. And then another person wrote and tweeted and another and another. Pretty soon it was all over the twittersphere. Within hours the LA Times had picked up the story, then the Seattle Post Intelligencer, then Entertainment Weekly and The Wall Street Journal and by the end of Sunday GLAAD (Gay And Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation) was on board and demanding answers. Somewhere between the slew of complaint emails and GLAAD Amazon decided that they had glitched up. This morning they corrected the problem and gay fiction (including Virginia Woolf) can be found on a regular search.
It’s kind of amazing what a boatload of 140 character tweets can do.
By the way, Susie Bright still doesn’t get a ranking and Playboy Redheads still does. Guess you can’t have everything…unless you shop at Barnes And Noble or a fair minded independent bookseller.
Kyra Davis
Bestselling Author of:
The Sophie Katz Murder Mystery Series,
and
SO MUCH FOR MY HAPPY ENDING
Pre-order LUST, LOATHING AND A LITTLE LIP GLOSS on Barnesandnoble.com or Indiebound.com today!
Friday, April 10, 2009
My Website Has A New Look!
It's all new and sparkly like ; )
Click the link, check it out and let me know what you think!
Kyra Davis
Bestselling Author of:
The Sophie Katz Murder Mystery Seris,
and
SO MUCH FOR MY HAPPY ENDING
Pre-order LUST, LOATHING AND A LITTLE LIP GLOSS on Amazon or Barnesandnoble.com today!
Click the link, check it out and let me know what you think!
Kyra Davis
Bestselling Author of:
The Sophie Katz Murder Mystery Seris,
and
SO MUCH FOR MY HAPPY ENDING
Pre-order LUST, LOATHING AND A LITTLE LIP GLOSS on Amazon or Barnesandnoble.com today!
Wednesday, April 08, 2009
I'm Tweeting It Up!
The reason I’m a novelist rather than an Emily-Dickinson-like poet is because I have a hard time expressing myself in a few lines. So you can understand my reticence to join the Twitter bandwagon. Besides, isn’t having a presence on Facebook, Myspace, Blogger and my Amazon blog enough networking for one person?
Then again, maybe it’s not. A friend of mine who is building her career/reputation as a food critic told me that since she started tweeting major restaurants and hotels have become her “followers.” Another friend who is a club owner was able to increase his establishment’s buzz through Twitter.
In other words, if you have something to promote (like, say a new book) not Twittering might be kind of…well, stupid. And I’ve also discovered that for certain messages (like telling everyone that my contest winner will be staying at the Parc 55 hotel) Twitter is pretty much the ideal form of communication. Lastly I have discovered that other people are twittering about my contest and some of the information out there is a little misleading. If I want to make sure people know what’s really up I’m going to have to learn how to relay the truth in 140 characters or less.
Needless to say I will be twittering from now on. I am only going to tweet if I have something interesting to say which won’t be every day. But when something major happens or when I want to say something about Sophie and her friends (which is actually pretty often) I’ll let my Twitter followers know. I’ll also be letting my followers know every time I post a new blog.
So if you’re a Sophie fan come on over. I promise that my Twitter followers will be the first to know about any new Sophie news. For instance, most of you know that the fourth Sophie Book is titled Lust, Loathing And A Little Lip Gloss. But do you know what the title of book 5 is going to be? If you’re not on Twitter you probably don’t.
Now, let me clear up some of the rumors and questions about my contest:
1) This contest is for readers…not the media. I cannot count any review that you were PAID to write about Lust, Loathing And A Little Lip Gloss as a contest entry. That would be the equivalent of bribing the press. However, if you just happen to be a journalist and you want to post a review on Amazon just for kicks (not pay) and you notify me twenty –four hours before you post it than I’ll be happy to throw your name in the hat.
2) If you use the cover of Lust, Loathing And A Little Lip Gloss as the background image for your Myspace page I will consider that a contest entry. You’re free to do that any time but it’s going to have to be up for at least one week between June 1st and August 15th in order for me to consider it an entry And of course you’re going to have to let me know about it; don’t take it down and then tell me it was up two weeks ago but I missed it. That won’t count.
3) While it’s true that I will be giving away gift cards in addition to the trip to San Francisco the gift cards will go to people who DIDN’T already win the trip. For instance the person with the most entries will get a $300 Sephora gift card UNLESS they won the trip to SF in the drawing. That said, the person who does win the trip to San Francisco will have their meals paid for and I will be paying for a variety of entertainment that I will be planning as part of the Sophie tour.
So that’s pretty much it. For more contest details scan down to my March 5th blog. And remember, my Twitter user name is kyradavisauthor. Come over and check out what me, and Sophie are up to!
Kyra Davis
Bestselling Author of:
The Sophie Katz Murder Mystery Seris,
and
SO MUCH FOR MY HAPPY ENDING
Pre-order LUST, LOATHING AND A LITTLE LIP GLOSS on Amazon or Barnesandnoble.com today!
Then again, maybe it’s not. A friend of mine who is building her career/reputation as a food critic told me that since she started tweeting major restaurants and hotels have become her “followers.” Another friend who is a club owner was able to increase his establishment’s buzz through Twitter.
In other words, if you have something to promote (like, say a new book) not Twittering might be kind of…well, stupid. And I’ve also discovered that for certain messages (like telling everyone that my contest winner will be staying at the Parc 55 hotel) Twitter is pretty much the ideal form of communication. Lastly I have discovered that other people are twittering about my contest and some of the information out there is a little misleading. If I want to make sure people know what’s really up I’m going to have to learn how to relay the truth in 140 characters or less.
Needless to say I will be twittering from now on. I am only going to tweet if I have something interesting to say which won’t be every day. But when something major happens or when I want to say something about Sophie and her friends (which is actually pretty often) I’ll let my Twitter followers know. I’ll also be letting my followers know every time I post a new blog.
So if you’re a Sophie fan come on over. I promise that my Twitter followers will be the first to know about any new Sophie news. For instance, most of you know that the fourth Sophie Book is titled Lust, Loathing And A Little Lip Gloss. But do you know what the title of book 5 is going to be? If you’re not on Twitter you probably don’t.
Now, let me clear up some of the rumors and questions about my contest:
1) This contest is for readers…not the media. I cannot count any review that you were PAID to write about Lust, Loathing And A Little Lip Gloss as a contest entry. That would be the equivalent of bribing the press. However, if you just happen to be a journalist and you want to post a review on Amazon just for kicks (not pay) and you notify me twenty –four hours before you post it than I’ll be happy to throw your name in the hat.
2) If you use the cover of Lust, Loathing And A Little Lip Gloss as the background image for your Myspace page I will consider that a contest entry. You’re free to do that any time but it’s going to have to be up for at least one week between June 1st and August 15th in order for me to consider it an entry And of course you’re going to have to let me know about it; don’t take it down and then tell me it was up two weeks ago but I missed it. That won’t count.
3) While it’s true that I will be giving away gift cards in addition to the trip to San Francisco the gift cards will go to people who DIDN’T already win the trip. For instance the person with the most entries will get a $300 Sephora gift card UNLESS they won the trip to SF in the drawing. That said, the person who does win the trip to San Francisco will have their meals paid for and I will be paying for a variety of entertainment that I will be planning as part of the Sophie tour.
So that’s pretty much it. For more contest details scan down to my March 5th blog. And remember, my Twitter user name is kyradavisauthor. Come over and check out what me, and Sophie are up to!
Kyra Davis
Bestselling Author of:
The Sophie Katz Murder Mystery Seris,
and
SO MUCH FOR MY HAPPY ENDING
Pre-order LUST, LOATHING AND A LITTLE LIP GLOSS on Amazon or Barnesandnoble.com today!
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