ROBUST discussion

I'd really like to have people's blog links at the end of their posts/comments so I can easily find out more about the person I'm talking to. It wouldn't have to be in each comment in a conversation but at least at the start. I would find that really helpful.

Like this
http://tahlianewland.com/blog/

That would get really, really tiresome to see in post after post. There's a place here to list one's blog and it can be in one's profile. Please, lets not bog down the posts with sigs like that.

I feel I need to clarify something. We aren't advertising here. We are discussing things, a meeting of the minds, not a commerical forum. I think you've confused Robust with Kindleboards.

It's okay - there are very few forums where authors gather to do things besides sell books. We may talk alot about how we are selling our books, and help each other out by sharing results - But mostly we are being silly and having fun. Except maybe the Rant's forum. (Warning - don't read anything with "Global Warming" in the title. It gets ugly in there.)

PS - Every one of us has our books listed here: Member's Books - which is right under 'Introduce Yourself.'

As for me - you can google me - or go to http://jordanscroft.blogspot.com

If you want to get to know us better, I'd suggest that you follow the blogs listed that interest you via RSS feed, email or Google Friend Connect.

My blog isn't book oriented. I'm not an author but a ferocious reader. I seldom blog about the books I read though as mine is more personal, not specifically geared towards books and ebooks as your blog seems to be.

Besides, I don't think Goodreads has an automatic signature setup like other forums do, unless I missed that somewhere when I joined originally. You'd have to type out the URL every time you post.

Ehem - Claudine is an extraordinary editor, as is Sharon. They are too modest to tell you that.

There's no reason those who want to shouldn't have a sigfle on ROBUST. There's absolutely nothing in the rules to say we should all conform to a single pattern of behaviour, and at no time have we, so there is no precedent either. ROBUST was specifically founded that my friends and I would not have to conform to the lowest common denominator of anything or anything. In particularly, everyone who joined was told that they could promote as they wished and as often as they wished, and sig files were specifically mentioned as an example of "whatever isn't specifically forbidden is permitted". The reason we don't see sig files is because no one can be bothered, not because there is some rule against them.

But Tahlia does have point. A newbie to books and ROBUST, who doesn't know who I am, will have a hard time discovering anything useful: Google has half a million references about me, and I don't even have a suggestion for a newbie to find her way through that surfeit of information.

In fact, I'm amazed at how people find their way to my books, since I make so little effort to sell them.

There appears to be a certain amount of magic extant on this part of the net. Notice for instance that somehow most of the good editors have ended up working with me.

I just have all my links in my profile wherever I am (including Goodreads), so I figure if people are interested they can click on my profile.

Plus, I'm lazy.

Lazy? I like that. It's my favorite thing to be. I'm so lazy I don't even have a blog, nor do I want one.

Ehem - if you click on the person's name - you see their posts - another click on their name their Goodreads profile pops up.

...and if you Google me, I appear to be an eye doc in California or any number of Hispanic women. What I really hate is that there's a gooey quotation about love attributed to someone with a name that matches mine and some, including my incredulous ex, assume I wrote it.

Googling me gets, well me. Well me as positioned by my official writer blog, accounts, et cetera.

The #1 hit is my blog. :) SEO for the win!

I actually have all slots but one* on the first page of Google results and a good chunk of the 2nd and 3rd pages.

*Ironically, that hit is in a scientific paper, but it's a different J.A. Beard in a totally different field.

You should take credit for that scientific paper just 'cause you can. I enjoy taking credit for my opthamology skills (did I spell that right?) and the pretty face that doctor has.

That's fine. The suggestion wasn't an attempt at marketing, just to help me get to know you better because I'm too lazy & time strapped to go searching for your blog, even in the listing here. I wasn't suggesting you do it in every comment either, just the first comment on a thread, but maybe you guys all know each other already.

Thanks for all the alternative suggestions. Trouble is I already follow masses of blogs so following all yours too would be a bit unweildy and the goodreads page is okay if you've got an authors page but not so helpful otherwise.

I'll just have to make a few more clicks.

Patricia wrote: "...and if you Google me, I appear to be an eye doc in California or any number of Hispanic women. What I really hate is that there's a gooey quotation about love attributed to someone with a name t..."

LOL One of the things I'm quite pleased about is that apparently, I'm the only Tahlia Newland on the web - apart from an aboriginal girl called Talia from the Northern Territory, and even she's close to home.

I'm just hoping no serial killers with my name turn up. But, come to think of it, it might help sell my serial killer novels.

Patricia wrote: "...and if you Google me, I appear to be an eye doc in California..."

So what're your pen names again? I need to look you up myself.

Hey - look at that - I've got 2 pages of Google too! Hot damn! I'm famous - for an unknown Indie writer. LOL

On Passive Guy's blog Camille explained the in's and out's of Google algorhythms - it boggles the mind.

K. A. wrote: "Patricia wrote: "...and if you Google me, I appear to be an eye doc in California..."

So what're your pen names again? I need to look you up myself."

I'm an eye doc as myself. My other names: Sierra Philpin and one that's secret.

Patricia wrote: "I'm just hoping no serial killers with my name turn up. But, come to think of it, it might help sell my serial killer novels."

You write them so well!

You have to blame the good parts on my co-author.

Nah, yours was just as good. His was just sick. :D

Mind what you say about John Philpin. He's got an FBI badge...

FBI, NSA, ATF, it's hard to say what faked credentials he has on any given day.

He's definitely got two buck and ten cola tops...

Why do I picture this guy with a sliver cap-gun and a white cowboy hat? LOL

Nah. He's a big, gruff guy with long white hair and a beard. A grumpy Santa Claus.

Oh no, he's more like the members of ZZ Top. Definately not Santa! His parts were sick in a good way.

Since I don't know who ZZ Top is, I can't form a mental picture. He looks like Leon Russell (which may be spelled wrong).

http://www.google.co.za/search?tbm=is...

That's close, but too much color in the hair.

If you Google me you will come to INTERPOL’s wanted list.

But I didn't do it! It was my evil cousin of the same name.

I believe you're innocent, but I called in a tip about where you can be found just in case there's a reward. I need the money.

You're all heart, Sierra.

Patricia wrote: "I believe you're innocent, but I called in a tip about where you can be found just in case there's a reward. I need the money."

S'ok; I would have done the same. Of course now I will have to send out my two assassin ninja cats to eke out my revenge. Nothing personal.

Fat Ninja!

We're a bloodthirsty little lot. If I'd known there was money involved I'd have called the tip in too.

Sadly the first thing to come up when I Google myself is a LinkedIn profile I did a bajillion years ago. So out of date. An nowhere near as exciting.

Maybe I should invent an alter ego....

Claudine wrote: "Fat Ninja!

We're a bloodthirsty little lot. If I'd known there was money involved I'd have called the tip in too.

Sadly the first thing to come up when I Google myself is a LinkedIn profile ..."

Or commit a very colorful crime. You only live once (probably) and you will need something to entertain the grandchildren.

See I've never committed a colourful crime. Apart from that one time in the pool at the housewarming party...but I was with a cop friend so that can't count and it wasn't colourful. Unless you count the colours of the booze in the drinks bath?

Oh and I believe Karma's a bitch. You get to come back and enact your life over and over and over and over.... :D

Claudine wrote: "See I've never committed a colourful crime. Apart from that one time in the pool at the housewarming party...but I was with a cop friend so that can't count and it wasn't colourful. Unless you co..."

A very colorful crime is something you’ve done that when told to other they will never, ever believe you did it, no how much proof you might have. Oddly enough I seem to have a whole bagful of them. Perhaps I could loan some out.
Let’s hear more about that time in the pool at the housewarming party...

Well I was young, and foolish and the party got heated when someone decided that the bath of drinks should be floating in the pool with everyone else. That way no one would have to leave the pool to get a drink. Except it was the middle of winter, freezing in fact. The pool was not heated and outdoors. The cop friend thought it was hysterical to give his girlfriend (a straightlaced no nonsense banker type) a special brownie (she's the sort who has probably never even had a Tyelonol). I had one too many Katembas and ended up being chucked into the pool along with my friend's girlfriend. We spent the rest of the night drinking our way through very colourful bottles.

I'm tossing chunks of tuna far and wide to keep ninja cats away from me. They'll now be running in circles around me from a safe distance.

I committed a crime that wasn't too colorful, but it was about color. I suppose the statute of limitations has run out so I can confess to it here. Neighbors on my block had a couple of black jockey statues bookending their driveway. I found them offensive so I crept out in the middle of the night and painted the black faces white. When neighbor responded by repainting the faces white, I crept out again -- this time placing handmade KKK robes and caps on the statues. I embroidered "KKK" on both robes just in case the neighbor wouldn't understand that the statues were racist icons. When I drove by the next day, I saw that the robes were removed so I hired professional painters to come paint the entire statues white and send the bill to me (fake name) at the statue owners' address. When I drove by again, I saw the police at the neighbor's door and a painter's truck in the driveway; the police were obviously taking a report. Next, I called the Salvation Army, told them to come pick up one of the neighbor's lawn ornaments (a deer) which I intended to purchase later at the thrift store and hold hostage until the statues were painted white. I had my ransom notes ready to mail. But once again I drove by and this time saw the neighbor talking to the Salvation Army people. The deer stayed put. I gave up. But so did the neighbor. The house went up for sale within days and when they moved, they took the still-black-faced statues with them.

The statues were the ones with exaggerated features and glossy black "skin":

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawn_jockey

Claudine, when I was in college, a poetry professor had a party at which "brownies" were served. Another poetry professor, this one an innocent straight-arrow, gobbled the goodies having no clue what he was eating. The mysterious (to him) effects frightened him so much he went directly to the ER. When he discovered what he'd been given, the men -- both published poets -- began a many-years-long feud within the English Lit department with one poet trashing the other endlessly. With the line so clearly drawn when it came to drugs, students found it easier to decide which professor's class they wanted to take. You might think I would have chosen the party host's class, but I opted for the other. I thought the host had played a rotten joke at the expense of the other fellow, and that he enjoyed a bit too much having his colleague made fun of by all those with more liberal attitudes toward drugs.

These are indeed some of the best colorful crimes I've heard of for quite some time. And I am loling! I hereby suggest an anthology of colorful crimes, the only two criteria that they, the crimes, 1) be outrageous, but hurting no one (unless they deserve it) and 2) that said crime story is true.
Who’s in?

Well, you already have my entry. (I'm pretty sure those people I forced out of my neighborhood thought the KKK was coming for them, not that it was just my version of NAACP that was complaining.)

Edit: I think in my crime story, I should change caps to hoods because that's what they were. I failed to mention that my partner in crime was a minister (my brother-in-law) who said he'd never had more fun than when dressing the statues at 2am.

Patricia wrote: "Well, you already have my entry. (I'm pretty sure those people I forced out of my neighborhood thought the KKK was coming for them, not that it was just my version of NAACP that was complaining.)

..."

Well yes, but we'll be needing it in a longgggggggggggggger version, yes? 5000 words or so?

Oh, oh, a title! 'My Bad Self'. This is growing as we speak.

Brian, I'm way too lazy to write 5,000 words.

Patricia, you are so creative. And the crime is definitely colourful!

Brian, why do you need 5000 words? Patricia conveyed the story very nicely from the 300 or so words she used.

Claudine said: Oh and I believe Karma's a bitch. You get to come back and enact your life over and over and over and over.... :D

That's one view of Karma. My belief is that Karma is simply the experiences you have in a lifetime that add to your soul 'character', which is what you bring to your next life.

But getting back to the title of the post... I personally have no problem with a sigline, and ppl do promote here all the time in various ways. Sometimes I wish there were one when reading a post, but on the other hand I know that might tempt me more often than I have time for.

Tahlia, this thread is another perfect example of how we work on ROBUST, as per Andre's vision. Imagine the fabulous discussions and LOL occasions we would miss if there were a thread-topic-nazi here...

Sharon wrote: "Patricia, you are so creative. And the crime is definitely colourful!

Brian, why do you need 5000 words? Patricia conveyed the story very nicely from the 300 or so words she used.

Claudine said..."

I love it. This is real.
As for karma - for me, it's the habits that keep us doing the same thing and making the same mistakes over and over again. The more we repeat them, the more likely we are to repeat them, but.... if we manage to change the pattern just once, then we change our karma. There is hope my friends ... said in an overly dramatic voice

That's a good description, Tahlia. Real for sure.

Good description of Karma, too. ...said in an overly dramatic voice... LOL. Yes, I was thinking as I mentioned it that eyes must be rolling...

I hate it when people roll their eyes. It leaves such a sticky mess where they've rolled. ;)