Coming Home - the Carsons

Almost a month ago, I posted a very short blog about a soldier who contacted me regarding Operation e-book drop, and tweeted about it.

I got a tweet back, and a comment from Bert Carsons, and started swapping a bit of banter. A couple of days later, his wife Christina, joined in, then Kathy Hall and Dannie Hill. Great bunch of people, and talented writers - I'm having to eke out my book buying, but trust me, you don't want to miss this bunch - and if you're on twitter, hit them up - I'll their tweet handles at the bottom of this post. At the very least, you'll want to look at their blogs (and if Dannie & Kathy don't have you in stitches, there's a good chance your sense of humour fell off at the last stop).

The last couple of weeks have been difficult - stress levels I've never had before, and hope to never achieve again. A couple friends I've made on twitter - Teresa, Rayray, Rebecca,  Lorraine and Mhairi Simpson have helped with a great deal of it just by being hysterically funny.

The Carsons - and I'm definitely including both here, because I've never come across a couple that seem to function so symbiotically; these two go together like bare feet and beach sand - have been a reason for to get up in the morning.

Bert Carsons started making whooping noises about WolfSong. He tweeted me about it, he told Christina about it, he tweeted me some more.

Then he started tweeting quotes from my book. Then he got Iggy Pintado to retweet it and suggested I follow him (of course I did), and Iggy promptly DM'd and offered to retweet something for me.

Let's just say that I've been floating on air for most of this weekend.

The part that blows me away about all this is that Bert did all of this off his own bat. And it's not like he's got that much free time on his hands; he has three books out, two more coming in September, according to his blog. He works a day job. And a look at his twitter stream shows a very active and social man, with over 2500 followers.
And he found the time to do this for me. To interact with one very newbie author who often suffers from foot-in-mouth and a tendency to trip over her own feet.

I'm the first to admit that I can be very cynical about humans, up to and including myself. But people like the Carsons blow that theory out of the water. Bert uses "Yours to count on" as his trademark signature. I can say from experience those aren't just words. He lives them.

So now when I can't sleep, or when I get up in the morning, I touch the little blue bird on my phone. I check out my friends and their feeds, and it feels like coming home.

Twit-buddies you want in your life:
@BertCarson
@CarsonCanada  - Christina Carson
@RedMojoMama - Kathy Hall
@DannieC_Hill   
@iggypintado  - entrepreneur and social business manager; be warned you may spend hours just scrolling the links on his feed and clicking
@AMhairiSimpson

Not for the faint-of heart, but killer one-liners and hearts of gold:
@Lil_TweetyPie
@geminicad9098 
@CreepyWalker
@MissHaunted
@magicdarcy

Thanks to all of you.

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J H Sked is the author of WolfSong & Basement Blues.

You can find WolfSong on Amazon, Sony  e-bookstore, Nook, iTunes &  Smashwords. Basement Blues is on Amazon, Smashwords, iTunes  and  Nook 

The week twitter turned my stomach

I'll be one of the first to admit I'm a twitter addict. I don't tweet everyday, and a lot of what I do is re-tweeting when I come across a comment or article that someone else has written, because I find it valid, or interesting, or just plain funny. I've met some great people on twitter, the kind you just want to sit back and chat with. No agenda, no issues.

But this week... Man, this week left me with a truly sick feeling. There's a lot of sad, vicious little trolls out there that use stuff that happens in the world to push an agenda.

It started when Japan beat the USA in a football match. I lost count of the number of people screaming about Pearl Harbour. What the bloody hell a sports game has to do with a war event that happened before most of the morons tweeting about it were born escapes me.

Then the horrific shooting in Norway, where every right wing racist came out waving their banner about the Muslim danger. The fact that fundamentalist terrorists don't live or abide by the rules of Islam doesn't fit it with their own agenda's, so is casually ignored. Of course when it turned out the guy responsible appears to be a flaming right wing racist himself, the sound of rapid braking nearly drowned out the news. Hate to tell you this guys - it doesn't make him less of a terrorist. Look up the definition, since I'm too cursed grumpy and disgusted to do it for you right now.

Then yesterday Amy Winehouse was discovered dead. Once again, the trolls came out to play.

For me, when someone dies, no matter who or what they are, it should be a tragedy. All of their potential futures in this world are lost. No matter what they did in the past, are doing in the present - a loss of a life is a loss of the future. Keep in mind that right now, nobody knows what killed her. Everyone assumes it was an overdose, but hey - we've been wrong before.

Amy Winehouse was famous because she was one of the finest singers to come to light in years. There was nothing manufactured about her voice or her music. I avoided reading about her personal issues and the whole drug thing, because for me they were the least interesting thing about her.

At the same  time, she was one of many people struggling with a dark place. Her family, and the survivors in Norway have to try to find their way around the fact that a loved one is irrevocably gone. Your mind stumbles over that for a long, long time, and it hurts. It will always hurt.

 Something the twitter trolls seem unable or unwilling to understand. These people have the moral fiber and ethics of a rabid jackal. The difference is I pity the jackal, which after all never asked to go crazy and infect anything it contacts.

Les Floyd wrote in his blog about it being a psychic virus, which is the best way of putting it I've ever heard.

This week, the virus came close to making me physically ill.