Moving my newfoundland dog website

What a performance!  I decided to move my newfie website to another provider as the one I have is costing too much.  I found four so-called expert blogs giving instructions on how to do this, I bought hosting and arranged to move the domain name. 

 

My problem is that the navigation, i.e. the menu, is tied into the present provider and that is what I needed instructions for.  Well, the first one went into detail about loads of codes, you have to find somesuch access, etc, without telling me what that was or where I am likely to find it.  The second one said I would have to pay her to do it because it is too complicated for a dumbo like me (not in so many words, but that was the impression she gave), the fourth one had all the instructions except the one I needed and when I emailed him, told me they were all different.  Well, hello, either you know or you don't.  The other told me that if I didn't know what FTP meant I was not clever enough to do it.

 

Well, obviously if I didn't know what it meant I would google it to find out.  I ended up buying web design software and deciding to rebuild the website in that.  It seemed a lot easier than this which is obviously so complicated, nobody really knows how to do it.  They just pretend they do then try to make me feel stupid when I can't.  Yeah, right.  I am not falling for that one.

 

We have another nutter on the kdp forum this week, this one posting about me (I am so honoured) and calling me all sorts of names.  It doesn't work because I couldn't care less, but now he is getting in a state because it doesn't work and has resorted to locking himself in the bathroom and pummeling his little fists on the floor.  I am awaiting the next chapter.  I have another pompous one arsehole crawling, telling me and another lady that he can get authorities to track down the nutter and have him dragged from his home.  Yeah, right!  I don't know what planet these people are on, or in the case of the nutter what rock they crawled out from under, but it is a forum ffs!  Nothing to get your knickers in a knot about.

Another forum gem

So me and some other posters upset a couple of Indian writers by pointing out the flaws in their publications and businesses.  One is publishing books in the children's section depicting animal abuse, and had a book about paedophilia making it seem acceptable if it was with a child who was a slave.  So of course, he was given short shrift.  Then this other bloke comes along who has been pushing pornography on his club for teenagers, as well as plagiarising and stealing authors' work, publishing it under his own name.  So he was outed as well.  Actually, he's not a writer, just a fraudster, so I take that back.

Anyway, when given their horoscopes so to speak, they both screamed "you are only saying that because I'm Indian!"  Well you can imagine how well that went down.  Now he is telling me I am a bully and he is going to see me behind bars!  On what charge I cannot imagine, but do take a look and see what you think.

Free offer - 18th and 19th May only

Summerville Secrets, the fourth book in the Summerville Journals series is being offered free tomorrow and Monday.  I am doing this so that people can get a glimpse into the lives of the Summervilles and hopefully want to read more.  Please give it a try;  if you like historical romance, you will enjoy it - at least I hope you will.

Forums

Forums can be great fun and one can develop real friendships on them, sometimes even meet up with them, but they also seem to attract a lot of nutters.  You get people on the kdp forum for authors, who really believe they have written a masterpiece and when you point out the gazillion spelling and grammatical errors, they stamp their little feet and start calling you names.  Well, they do me, anyway.

 

In the last month I have been called a virago, a hag, a know it all and various other things, all because I pointed out that their offerings were not works of art and would not join Dickens and Jane Austen in the classics category.

 

Eventually these people start resorting to really childish behaviour, mentioning the genitals and my dad's bigger than your dad type of argument and it is always great fun to watch them disintegrate in this way.

 

One the other week declared himself to be a better writer than Stephen King, with his 35 page offering which was full of spelling mistakes.  Of course, he flounced off in a huff and hasn't been back since.

 

This week, on a pet forum, we have seen a very arrogant and pompous bloke not only making up stories that people had apologised to him when they haven't, but also threatening to sue us.  He also thinks that I panicked at talk of a law suit.  Yeah, right!  Do I seem like the sort to panic?  Far too energetic for my taste.

 

Please remember dog lovers everywhere - anyone at all is entitled to call him or herself a dog behaviourist or a dog trainer.  They need no qualifications whatsoever and many people are fooled because they set up a professional looking website and get some cards printed.  Anybody can set up a website, these people even set up their own dog training association because they can't get accepted at the official ones.  Then they can say they are the chairman and feel important.

 

If you get one who is up to date you are lucky, especially with idiots like Cesar Millan on the telly, talking about pack leader rubbish which was discredited years ago and by the person who thought of it in the first place.  He knows nothing at all about dogs, just look on You Tube.  The last dog I saw that bit him, he said:  I didn't see that coming.  Well, I got news for you sunshine - you are the only one who didn't!  He thought he was curing a dog of food guarding which is in fact one of the easiest behaviours to cure if done properly and if it can't be cured, it can easily be managed.

 

I have a relative who got one of these amateur 'behaviourists' out because her spaniel ran away and hid when they got ready to take her for a walk.  She had only been doing this since they got a headcollar but they couldn't work out that it was the headcollar that she didn't like.  This person couldn't figure it out either - she reckoned that the dog thinks she is the pack leader and it is too much responsibility for her!  What a load of bulls wotsit!  And they paid £60 for that gem.

 

Newsflash! Dogs do not live in heirarchical packs.  Neither do wolves but even if they did dogs are dogs, wolves are wolves and haven't been the same species for 50,000 years.

 

There is no method for training a dog;  it just takes patience and a respect for the dog.  I have a lot of tips for training newfoundlands on my website Gentle Newfoundland Dogs, but most of it would apply to any other breed.

 

When all is said and done, it is the nutters that make forums so much fun.  On the kdp forum this week we have had someone who has written 'an excellent 75,000 word novel which will be an enduring classic'.  The introduction to his offering declares that his house is about to be repossessed and he has done all the editing and publishing himself.  I pointed out that nobody wants to know that, that he is just telling them that his book isn't very good but they should feel sorry for him and buy it.  He didn't return, which I thought was a bit rude. 

 

If only these people would listen to some advice, they might actually have themselves an excellent book.

Countdown Deal this week only

THE SUMMERVILLE JOURNALS

This omnibus edition of the four books of the series normally sells for $7.95 or £5.95 is on a special countdown deal for this week only. The price starts at £1.99.

The US offer has already begun but the UK one will probably begin at about 4 pm this afternoon, that is the 11th May.

 

This tells the story of how Lord Richard Summerville meets his wife, Bethany, of how he offers her marriage in exchange for certain promises, notably her promise to follow his Catholic faith.

 

But when Mary Tudor gains the throne on the death of her half brother, her brutal and zealous attempts to turn England back to the Church of Rome drive Richard and Bethany apart and she betrays him by using his own property to help protestants to escape.

 

The second book is the story of Rachel, Richard's stunningly beautiful mistress who he keeps with him at court, while his wife is imprisoned in a peasant's cottage to fend for herself.

 

The third book tells of the Summerville's attempt to forgive each other their past sins and rebuild a future together, despite an unlikely enemy and his attempts to destroy them.

 

The fourth book concerns their three adult children and their own attempts to build  futures with the threat of their parents' secrets hanging over them, coming between their daughter and the man she loves.

 

Click on the Title to be directed to Amazon.

 



New Novel - To Catch A Demon - Now available on Kindle

My new novel, To Catch A Demon, is now available through Amazon.  Only on Kindle so far, but it will be out in paperback within the next few days.  I hope you like it.

Out in paperback as well now, available from Amazon.

To Catch a Demon - Restoration 1660

This book is set after the Protectorate, on the return to England of King Charles II.  England has had a few civil wars, one of the most notable being the struggle for the throne between the Empress Maude, daughter of Henry I and his rightful heir, and King Stephen, her cousin, who grabbed the throne on Henry's death.  Of course, being the early twelfth century, nobody believed that a woman could rule, despite Maude (also known as Matilda) being one of the strongest women in English history.  After much bloodshed, the result was an agreement to make Maude's son, later Henry II and the first Plantaganet King, Stephen's heir.  Then there was the Wars of the Roses which is really too long and too complicated to go into here.

Our most famous civil war, however, was the one between King Charles I and basically his subjects.  He was an autocrat, who believed in the divine right of kings.  He believed that he was all powerful and he upset the people by dismissing parliament and hiring mercenaries to fight against his own people.  He lost his head, the only one of our monarchs to be officially executed, although a few were murdered.

 

His son fled to France with his followers and the country was ruled by Oliver Cromwell, a farmer from Huntingdon, whose strict Puritan ideas made England a very dreary place to live.  He decreed that people should wear dark, dismal colours, he made celebrating Christmas illegal, and he made adultery a capital offence - but only for women of course.

 

So the people were delighted when Charles returned to reclaim his throne.  Our story begins on his return and tells the story of Diana, the sixteen year old daughter of a loyal royalist.  They managed to survive quietly in the country until the day that Jasper Philbert and his roundhead followers discovered them.  He murdered her parents and  forced her to marry him.  After ten years of physical and sexual abuse at his hands, the King returns and our story begins here with her reunion with the man to whom she had been betrothed and her subsequent struggle to prove she is innocent of treason.

 

Fun on the KDP Forum

The KDP forum is where authors get together and seek advice, have a laugh, discuss what is good and what is bad, etc, etc...........

So the other day someone posted a thread called Words of Wisdom, in which he posted some words from his military manual and others joined in with well known and not so well known sayings.  Everyone was enjoying themselves, nice and friendly, until this very superior pratt came along declaring that he had heard them all before and there was nothing new or interesting.

Of course, I couldn't let him get away with that, so I replied and it all kicked off from there.  He decided that me and two other posters were all one and the same person and his evidence for that was that we all agreed with each other and we all put two spaces after a full stop.  Well, most people do and it is how Word likes it done, otherwise you will get a squiggly green line.  Then resorted to mentioning genitals, specifically his pecker, then name calling, which is what children often do when they are losing.  Then he went crying to the moderators and had most of his more stupid posts removed.  Of course some of them had been quoted, so that didn't work as well as he thought it would.

There is always one, and most of them live.

The Crimson Field

I like a good historical programme, although WWI isn't my usual era, but I have really been enjoying this.  Even in the space of a hundred years, women's status and rights have changed so radically.  In one scene in this programme, the matron tells a volunteer nurse that regulations dictate that she must open and read all correspondence in and out of the hospital for and from females.  Only females, you note.  This hospital is a mobile unit, much like the one on the brilliant comedy series, MASH, and it is set in France, but the men don't have to have their private letters read.  They could be giving away secrets all over the place, but the important thing is to make sure that none of the females are doing anything immoral.  Wow!

 

I remember myself when rape within marriage was actually made a crime, so that must have been in the sixties or so.  Anyway, so far it is good, but a friend who served in the Royal Navy tells me they have the salute wrong.  I can't remember what she said now, but I will find out.  I know she said the salute they are using in the Crimson Field is not British Army.