murder.booklocker.com

I’ve just locked in another stop on my virtual book tour planned for the middle or end of next month. If you have a blog and would like me to stop by for a chat about PARK RIDGE, let me know.

To tell the truth, most tours aim for blogs with a lot of traffic. Makes sense if you want to sell books. But I’m partial to blogs with a lot of interaction — readers that ask their own questions, make their own comments, and expect responses from the person being interviewed. (I’ll hang around the blog all day and half the night, just to respond). If you’ve got one of those, God love you, we need to meet up so I can convince you that you really ought to pencil me in for a visit.

For those of you who don’t have the above, but want me anyway, (ah, the bliss of being wanted!) just leave a comment and a valid email address. I’ll be in touch. 

Today has NOT gone as expected. I made major changes to this blog yesterday, primarily re-categorizing things. Then this morning I made one minor change — I added 2 subcategories — and the whole thing went kaflooey!

I like the Wordpress theme that I have. It’s called Ginseng Coffee. But the way it’s set up, there’s only room for categories on the tiny line below the asterisk in the circle. Guess I’m verbose enough that four or five categories wasn’t enough, so I had to try and figure out where to put the others. In the meantime, all the subcategories showed up – prancing all over the quote I used to have from Theodora Van Wagenen Ward.

I had already decided to use the big brown box (that used to hold the quote) as advertising space. No way to do that until the other stuff was unscrewed. Hours later, it was working and I had plugged the ads in the box. I still had categories left over. What to do?

As you can see, I decided to put them in the same brown box with the ads. And boy, don’t I think I’m clever in having figured out how to do that!

Then, being a glutton for punishment, I got myself a MySpace account. Back to feeling stupid. It took four more hours to figure out how to change the appearance of that page without messing things up — one more time. Ah me. It’s been a terribly long day already.

We’ve been getting all sorts of catalogs in the mail — everybody wants to sell us something to give as gifts for Christmas, I guess. I’ve been keeping track of the sayings inscribed on t-shirts and ballcaps that might turn into an article of interest to senior citizens. [Interesting thing that word(s) ball cap. Because I used it as two words in my book, someone wrote to ask me if I was Canadian. However, if I type it as one word, the spelling checker from Word highlights it and gives me the option of changing it to "Balkan" or "black." Maybe Word is Canadian.] The most recent slogan (and forgive me for misquoting — we’ve already pitched the catalog) was that perennial favorite which reminds you that Excrement Occureth.

Well, a boatload of it occured this morning. I opened my browser which is set to my home page. Instead of seeing the familiar grey background with its artfully arranged blocks of color, with links to my Emily Dickinson research, links to my books and classes, a link to the artist, Barbara Weber Wright, a page of photos and writings by Donna Jackson, and to Luanne’s recipes and flowers — lo and behold (sounds Christmas-y, doesn’t it?) there were only two words.

I instantly fired off WS_FTP which I use to post pages to my site. My files were still there; however, there were lots of files which did not belong to me. When I queried my hosting service I was told:

“The sites are now down.  What we believe happened is that our co-lo site got hacked (presumably by the XXXX), although they have not yet confirmed this.

“We have taken the sites down and are cleaning them or restoring from backup as necessary, and are putting everything onto new hardware with new settings, IP and DNS, etc. etc.”

Which in non-geek-speak means excrement in the machinery, deposited by someone using the server as a porta-potty.

I can only hope the site is back up soon.

Yesterday I discovered a reference to John Hagedorn, Associate Professor, Deparment of Criminal Justice, University of Illinois at Chicago. I had to chuckle at the coincidence — the detective in PARK RIDGE has a BA and MA from UIC — in criminal justice!

I sent email to John, assuring him that we were not related, remarking on the coincidence. He responded with, “Of course you know of Jessica Hagedorn (Dogeaters, no relation. I am a dog lover) and Ann Hagedorn who has just done a book on the Underground Railroad. Hagedorns Rule!!!

Ann Hagedorn Auerbach’s book, Beyond the River: The Untold Story of the Heroes of the Underground Railroad, was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. Other books include: Savage Peace: America in 1919, Ransom: The Untold Story of International Kidnapping, Wild Ride: The Rise and Fall of Calumet Farm Inc., America’s Premier Racing Dynasty.

Jessica Hagedorn is known as a novelist, poet, multimedia and performance artist. Her books include Dogeaters (which John mentioned), Charlie Chan Is Dead: An Anthology of Contemporary Asian American Fiction, Dream Jungle, The Gangster of Love, Burning Heart: A Portrait of the Philippines, and Danger and Beauty.

“John M. Hagedorn is the author of People and Folks: Gangs, Crime and the Underclass in a Rustbelt City, and Forsaking Our Children: Bureaucracy and Reform in the Child Welfare System. He has studied gangs in Milwaukee for 15 years, most recently as principal investigator in the Posse and Homegirl Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s Urban Research Center. He is now investigating the business of drugs and the underground economy.”  MORE