Yesterday I mentioned that I printed the first paper draft of my novel. I'm still very excited about it. The story has gone through a dozen or more drafts on the computer, but there's something special about seeing it on paper for the first time. Today I will be "blue-penciling" the copy (actually, I use a red pen) and, in a few days, when I'm done, I'll be typing in the edits on the computer. --- Mya

Then, guess what? I had to explain everything from scratch to the new person because she had no idea what was going on. She didn't even know anything about Internet spoofs. She asked if I got the last name of the person who originally called me. I told her I only barely got her first name as an afterthought just as she was saying goodbye. The new rep said she didn't know anyone by that name and couldn't help me.

I had asked the first rep if I should email her my legitimate charges so they would know which were mine and which were bogus if more charges were posted to the account. She rang off without giving me an email address.

And that's all I know for now. In a book, you can wrap up a story while the reader is engaged in reading, but real life is never that convenient. The bank situation is a shock and a mess. It's all up in the air, so I can't just put it out of mind. I use that card for business-related purchases--with a conference on the horizon, the timing is terrible.

It's also disconcerting that they got me. I'm super-paranoid about cybercrime. In my nonfiction writing life, I'm the author of a well-respected reference on security and surveillance. I have firewalls on my firewalls, tough spam filters, and I only do business with companies I know. It's unsettling (and I told this to the service rep). If it can happen to me, it can happen to anyone. It's entirely possible that some major database has been compromised and I'm not the only one whose card information was stolen.

Dang. I was so excited about the conference I'm attending this month and now I have this unwelcome distraction to take away from my excitement. Oh well, that's life. Stay tuned. --- Mya

The problem is that the edits change the location of information on the page. Removing or adding a paragraph (or getting a general page shift from chapters falling on a different page) makes it really tough to find the lines that need editing on the screen. You basically have to scan-read to locate them and scan-reading on the computer isn't all that pleasant--it's hard on the eyes.

I'm not complaining. It's going well and I think the book is much improved and so much closer to completion, but I did feel the strain in my eyes and my brain and I had to take frequent breaks. In other words, what I thought I could accomplish in two days (I guess that was a very optimistic estimate) will probably take five days. It's not that I haven't done this before, but many of my previous books have paragraph headers and numbers to help guide me. A novel doesn't have that and a short story is short enough that it's not really a big issue.

Well, every day is a new learning experience. I thought I would just take a lunch break and mention that before gettting back to work. --- Mya

A couple of days ago I talked about my cybercrime debacle. Well, today I had my first casualty. I had ordered a tool a few days ago and got a message from the vendor saying the charge wouldn't go through. So, my bank has blocked my legitimate purchases and, due to the theft of my card number, is presumably letting the illegitimate ones go through so they can investigate the crook who took it. I had to call the vendor and straighten everything out, which stole almost half an hour out of my writing day. They were very nice about it. In fact, it turns out their system is very secure and they hand-check every credit card purchase, so it's nice to know some retailers are on the ball.

I also took a break yesterday and bought a box-load of books. They were on sale. They were cool. I couldn't pass them up. There were both new and used copies. Everyone's been talking about Stephen King's book "On Writing." They had a copy at a great price, so I bought it.

I have a confession to make. I've never read any books on writing. Not a single one. As I may have mentioned elsewhere (and on some of the writers' forums) I started writing at a very young age, even before I started reading regularly, and so my ideas about what to write and how to write were developing when I was only eight years old and I just never thought to read about how other writers approach it. My writing has changed over the years, for the better, I hope, because I am always striving to improve, but it's not so much from pedagogical study as it is from years and years of practice and reading good books. (You could probably tell that by all books I buy!)

Also, I tutored a lot of people on their writing skills while going to university, so I suppose I saw myself more as a writing instructor than a student of writing. I'm sure there's much that can be learned from other writers, it's just that it's hard to find the time to both study writing and to actually write.

I'm not planning to read the King book yet. I bought about twenty-five other books, mostly works of fiction, and I'm going to read those first, and then I'll cozy up in the couch and see what Stephen has to say. --- Mya

I mentioned in my Weblog a couple of months ago that one of my stories was accepted by GorillaMag, a literary zine produced in New York city. Well today I got the news that another story has been accepted by Tilt Magazine, a U.K.-based print and online zine. I guess there were some pretty bad submissions that didn't get picked. The editors mentioned "a mountain of dross" in their search for the ones they wanted to publish. The issue should be out soon. My story is called "Shootin' the Weedeater," a light-hearted (especially for me) story about a sister and brother living on a farm in the Ozarks. I'll let you know more about it when the publication is ready.

It's quite a job to keep up with everything right now. I'm so close to finishing my novel, I almost wish the writers' conference were in November instead of October--my book will be done by then. But you have to take things as they come--life is rarely convenient--and I'll make the most of the workshops and presentations this coming week. I'm sure it will be a lot of fun. Hopefully the lineups at the border won't be too bad. --- Mya

I'm trying to finish my novel and get ready for the writers' conference at the same time, so I don't have time to do detective work on behalf of the bank and the companies who potentially got ripped off. Nevertheless, I phoned one of the companies to let them know for certain that I hadn't made the charges. Why did I call this company first? Because their credit department sent me a letter asking that I photocopy my "credit" card and send it to them. I wasn't sure if the letter was part of the scam (they also suggest I do a "rubbing" of the card, a "poor man's imprint" you might say and send that). Well, this is a big company that has been around a long time and the letter looked like it had been photocopied on one of those $50 kitchen table copiers you can pick up at any discount store--it was crooked, smudgy, and downright unprofessional. It also looked like someone had tried to feed it through twice because there was a second toner "ghost" image very lightly overlaying part of the main image.

I called the 800 number that was listed on the form to see if it was real and got a recording. Well, anyone can set up a recording. Then I went to the company's Web site and found a different 800 number. I called that to verify the one on the letter. Sure enough, the letter had the correct number for their credit department. I don't know. It seems odd. I wonder if they contract out the collections activities to a third party.

Next I told the service rep that the charges were definitely bogus and possibly fraudulent. I asked where the person who made the purchases in my name had asked for the items to be shipped. She wouldn't tell me. She said she could give the bank that information. I told her the bank may have blocked the charge. She said she still couldn't tell me.
"Wait a minute," I said. "There's a charge on my account in my name and you can't tell me the shipping address?"
"That's right. Sorry. We can tell the bank if there's a problem."
"But if the charge was blocked, the bank has no actual part in this. You're telling me you'll give the bank which may not yet be technically involved, and which is a third party, information about my account, but you won't give me information about my account."
"Sorry," she said. "Maybe you could talk to your bank."
"I'll talk to the bank about fraudulent charges that actually go through on my card, but I'm not going to bother them about charges that haven't gone through yet except in general terms. I don't think they have the authority to investigate a charge that hasn't been made since, from their perspective, no fraud has been committed until there's an actual charge."
"Well you could log onto your account on the Web and see if there's anything there that might help."
I wasn't really mad at her. She was being patient and seemed as confused as I, but the whole thing was so ridiculous. Apparently banks can access more information about us than we can about ourselves. Scary.
"I don't have an account with you on the Web," I said. "I wasn't the one who bought the items."
"Oh," she said.
I guess she forgot I wasn't the one who placed the order in the first place.
Sensing that she wasn't going to helpful, I decided to ring off and think about things. Then, after thinking about things, I thought, Well, maybe she's right. Maybe there's useful info on the Web (though I doubt it).
So I logged on and realized that if the person who took my card number ordered over the Internet, he or she might already have set up an account with a password unknown to me. Fortunately, this wasn't the case. The system let me set up a new account. After doing a search on the invoice number, I discovered the shipping address was somewhere in Salt Lake City, Utah. (If the information is freely available to me on the Web, then why can't the service rep tell me this on the phone?)

The bogus order was apparently placed by phone. I wonder if the guy (if it was a guy) used his real name or a fake one?
Time to do some more detective work. I looked up the name and address in a dozen directories, but there was no one listed in the phone directory for that city or state with the name of the person who used my card number. I Googled the name (is that officially a verb yet?) and got no hits whatsoever even though both the first and last name are real names and not especially unusual.

Time to check some more information sites. I found out that the building listed as the shipping address was a four-suite apartment. That didn't tell me much, but at least it was better than knowing nothing. So I printed out the information on the account to give to my bank in case it was relevant. I still don't know if the charge to my card has been blocked by my bank or simply delayed. I can't find that out until Monday and I have a full schedule Monday.

Well, there it stands. I won't bore you with more details, but I wanted to relate my experiences so people have a better understanding of the disruption to your life that can be caused by someone highjacking a credit or debit card number (and some of the strange experiences you can have with banks and vendors when requesting information to which you should be entitled, but apparently are not).

I suppose it could be worse. At least I have an outlet for my frustration. I can always go beat up on the characters (preferably the villains) in one of my stories. --- Mya

I haven't had this camera for very long, so the flash went off automatically on the first shot. I had to poke around with the menu and buttons to figure out how to disable it. Then the exposure was all wrong (which is why you can't see the dark side of the moon in the first couple of shots) and I had to hunt around the menus and buttons and figure out how to manually set the aperture. Sigh. Cameras are computers now and I simply don't have enough free time to figure out how all this stuff works.

The last shot shown here isn't actually the last shot I took. I have one more that I didn't upload because it looks like the moon was bombed. There are big black pockmarks all over it. In fact, what happened was the moon went behind a tree, but it was so dark, I couldn't see the tree until I looked at the picture. The pockmarks are the leaves on the tree obscuring the moon. After that, I no longer had a clear view and I wasn't able to capture pictures of the moon re-emerging because of clouds and the necessity for sleep.

But it was exciting. I don't know if I've ever seen a total lunar eclipse. It's not a common event and you have to be on the right part of the planet at the right time (with a clear field of view) to see it.

Celestial events have a way of rousing people's superstitious natures. This was especially true in the days before humankind understood that the moon and the sun are physical bodies that follow regular patterns of motion sometimes resulting in extraordinary events. Actually, given the resurgence of interest in magic and witchcraft, I would guess that a lunar eclipse still stirs up a certain amount of emotional energy and probably provokes some pretty interesting rituals.

I'm terribly grateful to my friend for calling me. If he hadn't, I would have missed this rare opportunity. --- Mya