One of the things that annoys me about email communication is the tendency to not respond.  With all of the letters I’ve sent out to agents and other, I had to grit my teeth and bear it.  Of course, this makes the unacknowledged emails from students, co-workers, and others I deal with just that much more annoying. (My friends and family have pretty much been read the riot act on this topic, so they tend to be good about it.) Anyway,I decided to put my complaints where they might do some good.

Yeah, yeah, so I’m dreaming.

1. Fill in the subject line! I hate when this is blank. Especially when it’s from students. Or I get a subject that’s completely generic, such as “Midterm” with no name.  Multiply that by all the other midterms and I have no idea which one I’ve read. A name and the class would be nice. For others, at least put something there that has a hint about what you want to discuss.

2. Don’t send chains to acquaintances. Friends and family, people you know well, fine. If you really must. Don’t burden others, who might not think as you do with your incessant chains, to send to ten, twenty, a zillion people. I usually delete them. I rarely will pass on a chain.

3. Change your email password if your account gets hijacked. I get spam from friends quite a bit because of people getting hijacked. And if you see an odd link from a friend and they sent out a mass email, you might want to think twice about opening that link. I had one friend receive porn from one of my friends who she’d never met.

4.  Acknowledge receipt of an email.  I repeat: ACKNOWLEDGE RECEIPT of an email.  I will almost always respond with a “Received, thanks” when people send out communications to me.  It’s polite and a simple enough courtesy, so do it.

5.  Use common sense in communication via email.  Don’t put in information you would hare becoming public. Nothing online is private.

Yes, Query Hell exists.  I’m there.   It’s that place writers have to go before they are fortunate enough to find that agent or publisher willing to take them on.  It’s endlessly trying to find that “perfect” query that will get the attention of the right agent.  Writing, rewriting, ad nauseum.  Getting the opinions of other writers – who may or may not have a clue what they are talking about.

So, what is a query? It’s a letter you write to an agent/publisher introducing your work to them.  It contains a bio of you, contact info, a bit of technical info about the book – genre, word count, stand-alone or part of a series.  It also contains a synopsis of your story.  Now, wasn’t that easy to say?  A simple, little synopsis.  That horrid thing that grows into nightmare proportions and causes writers to lose hours of sleep, while they agonize over one word/sentence.

I’m currently rewriting mine – again.  I dream of the day when I can leave Query Hell and find a home with an agent who will recognize my name when I send an email and maybe even smile to see it.  One who loves my book and is as anxious to see it in print as I am.  Because let’s face it.  An agent who doesn’t love your work isn’t going to do much good, right?  So, I keep plugging away.  Knowing that my perfect match is out there – the agent who will smile when they see my name.  Knowing that I’m making them tons of money.  The dream goes on.

So my first two weeks of Cata are now well and truly over.  Most of my friends have returned to work and things are settling in, as we explore this new virtual world.  That first week will probably be something I remember and treasure for a long time to come.  There were five of us who played together and that makes leveling go so much faster, easier and just plain more fun than soloing.

One of our group I’ve been playing with for over three years.  Another for over one and a half.  A third for seven months and the fourth is a new addition to our group at a few weeks.  It was a great balance.  Another pally to balance my holy one.  Two shamans and a mage.  It kinda felt like the dream team, to be honest.  With plenty of CC in dungeons and our newest friend a vet from not only Beta where we met, but she was in Alpha as well.

Night One saw us on vent and waiting for midnight to pop.  I’d gotten in a few hours nap beforehand, waking up at 11:30 PM and ready to start what promised to be a marathon of epic proportions.  Several others had also done that.  We had food we could nuke or snack on, plenty of energy drinks.  I put on my fave music playlist, appropriately titled “Wow Mix”.

We were logged in and, as midnight hit, we logged out and started the process of trying to log back in with our shiny new game – along with a about a zillion other people.  It actually wasn’t  too awful, all things considered.  I think we were almost all ingame within thirty minutes.  Blizz did a pretty good job in anticipating the madness that would happen at midnight PST.  Please keep in mind that friends over on the East Coast were looking at clocks that read 3:00 AM.  Dedication to a game?  Insanity? Both?  Who cares?  We have fun.

Having played in Beta, our group had a bit of an advantage.  Everyone was on top of the riding trainer to get to fly in Azeroth on our own mounts.  Macros were typed and passed around so we didn’t have to “wait in line” to click on her.  A few moments after getting ingame and we were in the sky on our favorite flying mounts.  Heady stuff for veterans who’ve played since Vanilla.

We decided that Vash’jr was going to be the place everyone wanted to go first, so we opted for Hyjal instead.  I’m on a PVE server, thank heavens, but that didn’t stop some people.  Of course, Alliance flagged up and stood on quest givers.  Needless to say, most of us got flagged pretty fast in those first few minutes.

Coordinating with each other on Vent, we quickly got our first quests and set out to start them.  We played for about seven hours that first night.  It was after 7 AM PST (my time), when we called a halt.  We were now level 81 and pretty pleased with our progress.  We took a four and a half hour break, naps and food included, before returning to continue.

The first two days repeated this pattern.  Hours of play, interspersed with breaks for sleep and food.  Then real life intruded for some in the shape of jobs.  While they were gone, the rest of us would work on leveling professions.  Then they’d return and we continued our quests together.

It was a comfortable group.  We get along very well and look out for each other.  We had a lot of laughter and a lot of challenges, as new dungeon content is beefed up from the days of Wrath.

One of my friends and I went into Vash’jr on one of our “off times”, since we’d agreed to use that as a solo area rather than group.  I love that area – the way it looks, the quest lines.  It’s one of my fave things about the new game.  And there’s a lot to love about Cata!  Speaking of which – time to go play.

12/20/08

Soooo…I’m locking up for the night and I go to the side door next to my carport and it isn’t completely shut! I can’t remember if I left it unlatched, not something I usually do, unless I’m unloading the car. Which I had done earlier and I could have sworn I closed and locked it per usual. So I’m uncertain, but since we haven’t had any dog alerts, I’m not overly concerned.

Just to be on the safe side, I decide to search the house, including the guest room and my studio, which I don’t even go into very often. I start off sans gun, since I never did get it cleaned and if I had to use it would probably blow up in my face. No worries, this search is just a precaution.

I go to the guest bathroom and look in the shower – empty. Then on to the guest room and turn on the light –  room empty. As I start to move toward the closet, I hear an odd noise. Stopping dead, I inch forward a very tiny baby step, but decide that it is the hot water heater in the pipes. Nevertheless, I back up, turn off the light and close the door – very, very quickly, but not quickly enough – was that a voice???

Heart in my throat, I debate, gun? cops? If someone had been in there, they had to hear me. Why did they stay in the closet? Nah, has to be pipes. I go turn off the hot water determined it has to have been that. Not sure how I finessed that, since the water was warming up at the other side of the house, but I wasn’t thinking very clearly by then.

However, since there is no frigging way I’m just going to go to bed, I decide I have to investigate. So, completely weaponless, I go back – telling myself it has to be something in the pipes or ductwork, something. This doesn’t help a whole lot, but I’m not a coward.

Prolonging the inevitable, I open the door to the studio (next to the guest room) and turn on the light in there. Yep, my disaster in there surely would have impeded anyone trying to quietly hide, but I look in the full closet anyway. Empty of people or aliens or monsters.

OK, time for the guest room again. Deep breath, open door, turn on light, move silently into room. Same frigging noise as before, except this time I definitely hear a faint voice!!!

Frozen, heart pounding, dear god what do I do now, why didn’t I get the gun cleaned…but then why isn’t he coming out?  Why isn’t he attacking? Male voice for sure, but something odd about it. OK, can’t stand here all night. Just go over there and open the closet door…just do it…now…I’m going now…ok…this time I’m going to go open it.

I finally do. And there are these stupid Halloween displays that my brother left when he moved. Large box-like displays, from which the sound of a creaky door, followed by a deep voice saying, “You rang?” repeats over and over. Laughing, half hysterical with relief, I shut the door, turn off the light and leave the room.

Then the dogs started barking. They are still barking as I write this – 20 minutes later. I’ve checked outside as much as I’m willing to.  Meaning I stuck my head out and I couldn’t see anything or anyone. Still the dogs are on edge, which is freaky.

I’m pretty sure I left the back door not quite latched. Since if I had shut it tight, it would have been locked, as well, because I almost always keep it locked. I must have been going back out for something and gotten sidetracked. No one could have come in through the door, even though it wasn’t completely latched, without me knowing, since I have those alarm things that beep every time a door is opened.

The dogs surely heard the faint voice and were reacting to it. However, the question remains: Why did that stupid display start making noises tonight? Or has it been quietly talking to itself all these months and months? I’m thinking not or the dogs would have reacted to it before. Right?  So what set it off?

And why, oh why are the dogs still barking? A Very Creepy Christmas!

12/21/08

My heart was still pounding when I wrote this.  Used it as catharsis. The dogs eliminated anyone from being inside, but kept wanting out, which I did – ad nauseum. It was an hour before they finally settled down, secure that all was well.

I slept with the lights on, though.

Having checked out the closet in the light of day, I think that display has a motion detector. It didn’t start off right away, but the batteries could be wearing down which would explain why it is intermittent. I rattled it and it started, then stopped. It started again after I closed the door.

Still, there is a reason I refuse to watch the movie “The Strangers”. Living so far from anyone else does have a down side. I’m getting my gun cleaned.

12/21/08

The above was posted on a former guild website and received the following response:

“I suspect that this was merely a case where some sort of evil spirit unlocked the door, crept into your house and possessed the Halloween decoration (Which happens all the time). The dogs were reacting to the residual energy of the spirit transferring its soul into the cheap plastic. Your best bet to reduce odd evil spirits infusing Halloween decorations is to periodically burn one in whilst the other decorations are in plain view. This is to scare off would be spirits.”

Good idea!

As we draw closer to the release of Cataclysm, the newest expansion to WoW, the excitement level is almost palpable ingame. My friends are making plans around their work and school schedules. Some are taking their vacations starting this Tuesday. Some are beefing up computers. Some are leveling professions they hadn’t bothered with before. Still others are leveling alts. No matter what they’re up to, everyone seems to be anticipating this expansion more than those in the past.  At least, that’s how it seems to me. I know I was excited with Wrath, but not to this level. Even though I was lucky enough to play the Beta for Cata, I’m eagerly awaiting the chance to go live with all the new content.

I didn’t beef up my pc, although it’s already a pretty high tech gaming computer. I did make sure I had all papers in and graded before Tuesday, but I always have early due dates, so I’m not stuck grading that last week of school. And I’ve been leveling alts to get their professions up high enough to be useful.

We’ve had discussions on which new area we want to hit first and that’s still up in the air.  Vash’jr has the attraction of being underwater, but some of the initial quests will probably be overloaded with people trying for the same items.   That pushes Mount Hyjal into a more easily attainable area to start…at least until things settle down.

No matter where we start, we will be having a blast. That’s one thing I’m positive about.

Mostly a thoroughly enjoyable experience, I’ll post some of the thoughts I have on this.

With many years and over 3000 performances in over 60 shows, I’ll be sharing my thoughts and experiences on my former profession.