Tuesday 28 February 2017

Send help... maybe

A year or two ago, I set up a personal safety alert on my phone that I could activate when I was in trouble. It would send a picture from my front and rear cameras, my location coordinates and a recording link where the phone would record for a few minutes after I pressed the help key combination. All of this would be parceled up and sent to my darling’s phone.

I’m aware that since he never checks his text messages, or even knows how, that the plaintive cry for help would go unanswered. Whatever fate was befalling me would continue to do so without intervention. But still. When the police pulled my dismembered and horrifically abused body from whichever water course it had been weighted down in, THEY would get around to checking my incoming and outgoing phone messages and wah-lah! My killer may or may not be caught.

All of this magic was also dependent on me remembering the “special combination” required to trigger the emergency warnings in the first place. A remote hope indeed for someone who gets distracted walking into the kitchen for… well… whatever reason I walked into the kitchen for.

To tell the truth, I’d forgotten that this special system had even been set up on my phone. There’s still a faint hope that in the grip of a madman, I’d fumble my phone out of my pocket, remember this was set up AND remember the combination to activate it, but that hope is spinning-head and vertigo faint.

Tonight, I activated it.

Before you express any concern (and to prompt you that this would be the place to do that if you’re having trouble getting in touch with your emotions) I’m fine. I’m still confused as to what the key combination is, but nothing happened to warrant the call out for help at all.

I did, however, discover a fatal flaw in my plan.

When setting up said message, the phone asked me for an emergency contact to call. Of course, my darling topped the list, but highly sensitive to his special needs in relation to txt and pxt messaging, I helpfully set the call up to go straight to our home phone. Yes, that’s right. The landline. Just about the only thing in our house that plugs into a wall but ISN’T capable of receiving a message.

It goes without saying, I’ve now disabled the whole thing. The criminal element has triumphed yet again.

If you’d like to read a free short story that leads into a longer novel where the criminal underbelly may or may not triumph, then please click on the cover below to download my new short-short, Dead as a Dodo.

This is the first outing in my new Birdman Series and is short, sharp, and succinct, just like a drive-by shooting.

The first novel will follow along shortly, so in the meantime here’s a pretty cover:

(and if you’re still having trouble getting in touch with your emotions, here’s the bit where you go oooh and aaaah!)

Monday 20 February 2017

You don’t know me…

This afternoon I was sitting at my laptop, writing my little heart out, when Amazon sent me an email. Pleased of the distraction, I eagerly opened to find that they thought I would be interested in the latest releases in Sports and Outdoors.

Yes, you read that right. Sports and Outdoors.

Now, I’m not judging if that’s the kind of thing you like (oh, yes I am, I am so judging, can’t you feel me judging from here) but I didn’t even know there was such a section on Amazon. Let alone that it contained such esteemed titles as the Baseball Prospectus 2017 that I’m now obviously dying to read. I didn’t know this because I’VE NEVER CLICKED ON SPORTS IN… MY… LIFE…!!!

Amazon is meant to know what I like based on past purchases. Using this data, it should then send me emails making recommendations of things I might like to try. Secret algorithms and computer database magic govern the process, or so I’ve been led to believe.

What they’re not meant to do, is send me recommendations for Spanish-language novels when the only books I’ve ever purchased are in English (and, let’s face it, I sometimes struggle with that). They’re not meant to send me recommendations for Book IV in a series when I’ve never so much as dreamed of thinking of clicking on Book I. And they’re definitely, positively, not meant to send me recommendations for titles listed under the Sports and Outdoors section.

I’m fairly certain that where I live, there isn’t even an outdoors to begin with. If it’s on the other side of the window, it’s make-believe.

So Amazon, it hurts me to say this after we’ve spent so much time together, but it appears we’ve grown apart.

As an aside, in another real way, Amazon doesn’t know me any longer. This is because I’ve changed the name I publish under from Katherine Hayton to Lee Hayton. This was meant to be a name change to define books I was publishing in another genre, but I’ve discovered the joys of having a shorter name on a book cover so I’m not going back. If you want to stay abreast of any new releases, feel free to follow me on Amazon under the new pen name:

https://www.amazon.com/author/leehayton

You’ll find the below joys** already waiting for you there 🙂

**Joy not guaranteed