Nadia Lee :: Paranormal Romance Writer

I think newsletters are fantastic. I’ve started one myself, and I’m still giving away A Happily Ever After of Her Own, a paranormal romance novella, to anyone who subscribes to it.

But I’ve been getting some that are more like spam than true newsletters. Here’s how they manage to irritate me, and I don’t suppose I’m alone in being annoyed:

1. I’ve never given explicit permission to be added to the list. Getting my email address from somewhere is not permission for you to spam me. Yes. SPAM. The word may sound harsh, but if you send unsolicited promotional email, it’s spam. (And no, somebody sending you a private email once or twice does not constitute permission.)
2. I get a weekly email full of “buy this” or “buy that” that does not offer any value. Once a month is okay…maybe. Every week? No.
3. I cannot unsubscribe. I know some who mass email using the BCC field — even, God forbid, the CC field. Do not do this. Buy a newsletter service or install a script on your server that manages mass mailing lists. If I haven’t given you explicit permission to add me to your list and if you send me email that I cannot unsubscribe from easily, I will report you to your ISP for abuse.

I know it’s tempting to get your name out there, but really, a little common sense and courtesy will go a long way. You really don’t want people associating your name with spam.

A couple of people asked me via Twitter, etc. how they can read the password-protected chapter. Here it is:

I sent out the third installment to A Happily Ever After of Her Own in its entirety, plus the password to access the web version to newsletter subscribers yesterday (Monday October 19) at 6:30 a.m. ET. So please check your inbox.

If you signed up but have not received an email from the list, please make sure that you’ve clicked on the confirmation link. The link is in the email you got when you first signed up. If you haven’t received it, try signing up again with the same email address, so the system can send you another one.

If that doesn’t apply to you, please check your spam folder to make sure your email server didn’t mark it as spam.

If that’s not the case either, contact me via webmail form, twitter or by leaving a comment at the end of this post.

Interested in reading A Happily Ever After of Her Own? Sign up for my newsletter. It’s free.

Once you’ve signed up, you’ll get an email with a confirmation link. You must click on it or you will not be on the newsletter mailing list.

After the confirmation process is completed, you’ll get an email with links and passwords to previous freebies you’ve missed.

Thanks and enjoy!

I’m not sure what’s up with books set in Japan these days. Or maybe I’ve been extremely unlucky. It’s painfully obvious that the authors have never been to Japan, do not understand the culture and/or done all their research by watching anime (or perhaps reading manga).

The most recent one I bought made me livid. Even before I finished the first chapter, I came up with seven things wrong with the characters and setup. If it hadn’t been an ebook, I would’ve returned it and demanded a refund.

Living in Japan does not make your character Japanese. Sipping green tea while eating sashimi does not make your character Japanese. Wearing kimono does not make your character Japanese. And for pity’s sake, speaking broken Japanese in romanji does not make your character Japanese.

Got it?

Seriously…I’m never wasting my money again on a book set in Japan written by anime fangirls/boys.

status: I’m feeling more positive since I realized that I can salvage about thirty pages or so out of the eighty plus I’ve written on the earlier pre-writing draft (WIP).

music: “It’s a Fight” by Three 6 Mafia

On today’s #askagent, someone asked if agents check a potential client’s blog before offering. Colleen Lindsay responded:

Always. And I don’t want to see whining about how many times you’ve been rejected. A huge turn-off.

I’m always amazed at the kind of information people put on their websites/blogs and other public places. Nobody wants to work with someone who is high maintenance or crazy or just doesn’t know how to act professionally. Would you put the following on your blog while job hunting?

It’s been five months since I sent my résumé to fifty companies. Only ten wanted to interview me. I went to all of them, but they all said no. I hope I get a better result from the other forty.

Writing feels like “art” and therefore some may feel that they’re entitled to act like artistes. That’s a huge mistake. Creating a story is art. The other aspects are anything but. Treat getting published like a business and you’ll have more success.

P.S. My agent read my blog before offering. I was amazed at the amount of information she was able to garner from my posts, including where I lived, my quirks, etc. So beware!

Last night, my site got hacked, and my hosting service suspended my account. It turned out that some @#$% got in and installed a phishing script on my server. Thankfully, my host didn’t delete my account, and they gave me some tips on how to deal with the security issues. Unfortunately I had to delete my newsletter script from my nadialee.net site, but that’s really minor since it could’ve been WordPress, which powers my entire website & blog. (FYI — I upgrade WordPress religiously.)

So in order to prevent the @#$% that had happened to me from happening to you, I suggest that you upgrade your scripts & applications you have on your server. I’m talking about things like WordPress (the core), plug-ins, Joomla, forums, etc.

And all you hackers & phishing scammers out there — there’s a special place in hell just for you.

How’s everyone doing?

BTW — My site host is having a lot of problems with its email server. If you sent me an email requiring my response but haven’t heard back, please resend later or leave me a comment with your contact information, and I’ll be happy to send you a note from my gmail account.

Thanks!

1. I’m not looking for critique partners anymore. If you’re thinking about contacting me because you saw my wanted post, please don’t. Thanks.

2. I’m going on a hiatus. No personal problems or crises here. It’s just that I’m in the middle of working on my new project ideas, characters, etc. and I don’t want to be distracted. This also means I won’t be on IM or Twitter, for those of you who have my contact info there. I will, of course, be available via email. I will blog, but not as often as before.

3. If I have no idea who you are, I’m not going to approve your request to see my Twitter updates. It’s not that I’m trying to be exclusive or elitist, but I just don’t feel comfortable adding strangers I’ve never met in real life or online before, esp. because I tend to yap a lot about a lot of inconsequential stuff there.