Yesterday I Cancelled the Dish

DirecTV, I must say before I go any further, is an excellent service. The technician who installed the dish on our roof and plugged the special recording box into the TV set was competent, speedy, and courteous. The service reps I dealt with over the phone were helpful and courteous as well. I never met with the sort of bad service people are said to encounter when dealing with Comcast. If I liked any of the TV shows that were on offer, I would probably have kept DirecTV, even after the two-year special reduced rates expired. But the fact is, there isn't anything on TV worth watching. It's not DirecTV's fault.

Three years ago, when I signed up, I figured that, by the time the two-year contract had expired, anything I wanted to sit down and watch would be available on the internet. It came to pass! Don't you love it when one of your prophesies comes true?

You're thinking, but what about Harold? Isn't he going to miss watching football? No, Harold doesn't watch football. Or anything else on TV. So it's just my thing, and here is what I like to watch:

Old movies. TCM shows them, and sometimes, on Saturday night, PBS does too. Instead I can go to Netflix.com ($8.99 a month), Amazon Prime ($99.00 yearly, or $8.25 a month), YouTube ($0), or the Lambertville Free Public Library, which has a nice collection of movies on DVD ($0). Granted, for the stuff available on the internet you have to have a modern hi-def television set with HDMI sockets, a computer with a high-speed internet connection, and a proper cord to connect the two, and for the DVDs you need a DVD player and also a connecting cord. So you'd have to figure in the cost of that.

I have a personal collection of old movies as well. Some of them I bought from TCM.com. So I'm well supplied with old movies.

British and Australian TV shows. The most marvelous things are available on Acorn.tv, a site on the internet, where a membership costs $4.99 a month. Very little of what they offer can be seen on American TV. Again you need a computer to watch the shows, and also a cord to connect the computer to your TV set, if you need a bigger screen.

Grand Opera. With the machine that DirecTV gave me I used to record operas whenever they aired on Channel 13. But now the Metropolitan Opera has made available a huge selection of their old and current productions to stream on the internet, many in high definition. A subscription costs $14.99 a month, cheaper if you subscribe by the year. Way cheaper than dressing up and dragging yourself to the city, especially if your spouse can take it or leave it alone. Hey, I used to go to the old Met with the cupids and everything. I get the glamour and romance of a live performance. Still, I like being able to see the singers up close.

The Good Wife. This is the last network show I was seriously addicted to. It's been such a downer lately that I can scarcely bring myself to sit through it, especially now that Kalinda has bailed. If I were writing that show she would have killed Lemond Bishop the minute he started threatening her sweetie. (Or either one of her sweeties.) I so longed to see her kick his ass. Now it's never going to happen. Still, I can see reruns of Sunday's show on Monday afternoons on CBS.com. Without waiting half an hour for the show before it to finish running. Why do they mess with the schedule like that? Football, I guess. Or they think we're going to magically fall in love with Madam Secretary just from being exposed to the last half of it while looking for The Good Wife. Sorry, guys, not happening.

News? Not really. Watching network news, or CNN, or, God forbid, Fox news, is like getting punched in the stomach over and over. The things I need to know I can find out by reading the newspaper, without having to endure the sight of full-color footage. Seventy-five cents for a daily copy of The Trenton Times, and we get funnies with our news, as well as the cryptoquote, which Harold solves in his head without using a pencil. Our subscription to the Sunday New York Times includes on-line access to the weekday papers, if there's anything in them we need to see, as well as the complete archives dating back to the beginning of the world, a great boon to those of us who write historical fiction.

When I hear rumors of stuff happening, and I do, somehow, without resorting to network news, I go on Twitter to find out the real story. You may laugh, but it actually works. Ordinary people live-tweet all sorts of things.

The service rep at DirecTV tried to talk me out of leaving, which was okay, because that's her job: "What are you going to do when it snows?" I told her I was going to read a book.

So that's my plan.  I'll let you know in a couple of months how it's working, in case you want to try it yourself.

© 2015 Kate Gallison

Riding the Beast of Social Media

The cool weather is back. I wake from my long summer's torpor and pick up my Authors Guild Bulletin. It says here that other writers are prospering in their careers through skillful use of social media.

How does one do this? A couple of years ago I got some advice from Janet Reid, the Query Shark, who gave me tips on improving my web site (www.kategallison.com), told me to post on my blog three times a week, and guided me onto Twitter. My Twitter handle is @kategallison. Oh, please follow me. I still don't have many followers. On the other hand I don't tweet much. But this is about to change.

Alafair Burke's Puppy

Alafair Burke (@alafairburke) is good on Twitter, Janet says. I follow her, and it's true. She shares personal stuff without grossly invading her own privacy, a fine line to walk, and interacts gracefully with other tweeters. Besides being a lovely person and an engaging writer, Alafair has a really cute puppy.

J.T. Ellison (@thrillerchick) was mentioned in the Authors Guild article as having an excellent Facebook presence. I looked, and it's true. Odyl helped her design the application, and Involver handles her mailing list. Constant Contact is one of many other services that will do this for people. The mailing list is used to direct the newsletter.

Maureen Johnson (@maureenjohnson) won an award for her Twitter activities. She's a lot of fun to follow. Her web site is very nice, having been developed over a period of years. The visual design is gorgeous, and the functions work well.

All of these women are writers of enviable success, and owe some of it to social media. What are they doing that the rest of us can emulate? Here's a plan.

Write a really excellent book. (Hey, I did that. A couple of times.)

Choose your social media venue carefully. Don't overextend yourself. Nobody does everything. Remember you're going to have to update early and often. Here's what's out there that's been useful for reaching readers:

• Your web site. You have to have one. I'll tell you what needs to be on it in my next post, and suggest ways to put it together whether or not you have technical expertise. Meanwhile check out the above links to other people's sites.
• Your blog. That can be the same as your web site, with a little tweaking. Blogger supports custom URLs, and a number of other platforms probably do too. (If you don't know what any of  that means, don't worry about it. We'll talk later.)
• Your newsletter. You will write this at regular intervals and your mailing service will mail it out to the people who gave them their emails and said they wanted it. (I haven't been doing one. Maybe later.)
• Facebook. You can put up an author page on Facebook, which is different from the "wall" you use to send baby pictures to Aunt Fanny. It can, and should, be beautifully decorated and fancy.
• Twitter. Post short, clever observations here, hang around to see what goes on, and become involved in conversations. Post links to items of interest.
• Goodreads. You should explore that. I'm no good at it.
• Youtube. You can put book trailers up, if you have the skills or the money, or you can post home movies of your puppy.

There are others. These are the most popular right now. I don't understand the usefulness of LinkedIn to writers unless they're looking for day jobs, but there are groups on LinkedIn where you can talk to other writers.

Be open to hiring help. (For setting up pages and mailing lists, that is, not for writing tweets, blog posts, or Facebook remarks. That's supposed to be you talking.)

So here I go, all set to drum up a little interest before the next book comes out (MONKEYSTORM, or maybe BUCKER DUDLEY.) I'm going to try out some of the things mentioned in the Authors Guild article as well as the things I talked about here. I'll let you know how it goes.

I am not going to get a puppy.

Kate Gallison

Internet Constant Contact: How Much Is Too Much?

We need to talk.  Before my thoughts on this subject solidify.

On Facebook, two or three of my friends tend to post or share pictures eight or ten times quickly within half an hour or so.  On Twitter, there are people who tweet twelve or fifteen times a day.

“Bling!”  “Bling!” If my phone makes a noise announcing a text message, I pay attention.  It could be a family member who needs help.  It could be a witty friend inviting me for a chat and a glass or three of wine.  It could be my agent announcing a movie deal!  Most likely: it’s another writer tweeting to announce a new blog post.  Sometimes, it all seems like a bit much.

I agree wholeheartedly that we all need to take full advantage of the opportunities available from sites like Facebook and Twitter.  I have a feeling I don’t do enough.  You may feel the same.  Like most of the writers I know well, I am more or less desperate to attract attention to my work.  I am not at all above using shameless self-promotion.  Look what I am doing right now, for instance.  And yes, I will FB and tweet links to this rant.  This is all true.  But that said, I for one will benefit from some discussion of the question “How much is too much?” Is all this social media stuff something to do while procrastinating about getting on with the next book? 

Getting a substantive conversation going on a blog is a tricky business, but I hold out hope that you will weigh in on this.  How much is just enough when it comes to these sorts of communications?  And how many tweets or postings a day would you say are too many?  How should we space them out?  And how would you politely tell that wonderful writer whose work you so admire that telling everyone on FB every time her cat sneezes is not going to get us to like her more?

 Before I start annoying the stuffing out of all my friends, I really need to know what you think?

Annamaria Alfieri