Anemone-Eating Nudibranchs: Berghia

Yesterday morning, I received a FedEx shipment from a nudibranch breeder in Florida containing a tiny colony of some very special creatures. Unfortunately, peppermint shrimp will also eat berghia nudibranchs, given the opportunity. As a result, and because the berghia are actually fairly adorable (if you’re into slugs), I’ve set up a separate tank to try and get a colony breeding before I put any nudibranchs into the reef. (We’ll see how this works out in the weeks to come.) Yesterday afternoon, I added the first aiptasia anemones to the little tank with the berghia. I only wish I’d been recording it on

Read more

Opt-Out Requirements for Author Email

Author newsletters and other “blast” or list-based emails are generally considered commercial marketing material under U.S. law, and must comply with the CAN-SPAM Act. (See last week’s Wednesday legal post, or the law itself, for the reasons why.) Today, we’re taking a look at the mandatory opt-out provisions authors must include in newsletters and other commercial mailings to comply with the law. Every commercial email must include an “opt out” or “unsubscribe” option, so that recipients can request removal from the mailing list. By law: 1. Opt-out options must be visible and operable. Many email services (e.g., mailchimp)  include “opt-out” or “unsubscribe”

Read more

On Chapters, and When to Break Them

Many authors I know write books with chapters. I don’t. Before the people who read my books start pointing fingers and calling me a liar (pants on fire), allow me to explain. I outline my books before I write, often in great detail. (That is, I thought it was great detail until I heard Jeffery Deaver at last September’s Colorado Gold–his fifty-page outlines put my ten-pagers to shame, but I digress…)  When the outline is finished, I write the entire manuscript from start to finish without any breaks–except for the kind that involve removing my fingers from the keys. The result is one file, in

Read more

You Have to Write Another Book

People often ask about the biggest challenges writers face. Most of the time, they expect to hear answers like “deadlines,” or “getting good reviews” — but in truth, the biggest challenges in a writer’s world come from within. Fear. Laziness. Entropy. The three-headed Cerberus of every writer’s personal hell. I talk a lot about fear, and laziness…well, it’s pretty self-explanatory, and the only way to deal with that is lots of discipline and self-awareness. And so, by process of elimination, this blog must be about entropy. Thermodynamics will tell you that “entropy” represents a degree of disorder or randomness in a mechanical system, which causes

Read more

Is an Author Newsletter a “Commercial” Email?

These days, it seems as if everyone has a newsletter. Whether or not you believe that author newsletters are an effective advertising method (and I’ve heard arguments on both sides) if you have one, you need to ensure that your newsletter complies with the law. Although many authors view newsletters as a form of communication with readers, these newsletters almost always qualify as “marketing emails” under U.S. law. In the United States, email marketing is governed by the CAN-SPAM Act, which divides email communications into two categories: “relationship-based” and “commercial.”  Where emails contain both commercial and relationship-based content, the determining factor is the “primary purpose” of the communication. Although author newsletters often contain information

Read more

On Rocks, and the Things We Can Learn From Them*

*This is a re-post from December 2010, but the message rings as true today as it did then. Also, it explains the original setup of my seahorse reef, which now looks like this: Now, to the post:  Last Sunday I received my Christmas present: a 60-gallon salt water aquarium which will become a species-specific soft reef for seahorses and pipefish. As of 5pm Monday night, it looked more like a box of water with rocks. Reef tanks start with a sandy bottom and live rock, which needs time to cure in salt-water before anything more can be added.  You take a big glass

Read more

The Luck We Leave Behind

At many Shinto shrines in Japan, visitors can leave a donation and receive a written fortune on a strip of paper. Often, the strips are encased in small clay statues or “selected” by drawing a piece of marked bamboo (or, more rarely, the fortune itself) from a box. Near the place where the fortunes are, there’s usually a rack or display of paper strips, like this one (located at the base of the mountain at Fushimi Inari).  These strips are fortunes people drew but did not want to receive. By tradition and Shinto belief, if you leave your fortune at the shrine where you drew it, the deities will

Read more

Shinobi News – October 17, 2015

It’s good to be home! It’s autumn, and I’m back from a summer’s worth of wonderful traveling. Thank you to everyone who attended my signings–it means a lot when people come out to support me (and my books!). I just got back from Bouchercon–and I’m booked to attend the upcoming Left Coast Crime Conference in Phoenix (“The Great Cactus Caper” takes place February 25-28, and registration is still open, with slots available!) If you like mysteries, Left Coast Crime is a fabulous reader conference–I would love to see you there! I’m thrilled to be working with Seventh Street Books on the next installment

Read more

What The Author Pays For–And What (S)he Doesn’t

New authors–and sometimes experienced ones–may be uncertain about which parts of the publishing process the author “normally” pays for. What the author pays for differs, depending on the publishing path. Smart authors should know the standards for the choice they make, and be aware of how the other options function also. Now that the publishing industry offers multiple paths to publication, savvy authors should learn about all of the available options–regardless of the path they plan to take. Understanding all of the publishing options makes authors better able to choose among them, and less likely to misunderstand the offers they receive. Let’s review the various industry

Read more

Why Seahorses?

Most people are startled to discover that I keep seahorses.     The reaction doesn’t surprise me. For most of us, seahorses inhabit a mental space somewhere between sharks and dragons–real, but almost mythological, and exotic enough that we see them in public aquariums, if at all.   Even then, it’s sometimes difficult to catch a glimpse, between the crowds in front of the tank and the seahorses’ expert skills at camouflage. I’ve adored seahorses all my life, but decided to start keeping them in 2010–eighteen months after my father died. After doing “responsible things” with most of the money I inherited from him, my husband suggested

Read more