Books Gone Bad Bundle

Karen McCullough Posted on by

My novella, Guardian of the Grimoire, is part of the Books Gone Bad Bundle, available from BundleRabbit and other major ebook outlets.

Books make the world a better place. They are, perhaps, the only thing you can buy that actually make you richer. As Stephen King says, “Books are a uniquely portable magic.”

But what if it were actually true? What if there was actual magic emanating from a book itself? What if a book was sentient? What if a book could actually interact in our world? What if there is something a bit more evil or sinister lurking in the pages?

What if a book doesn’t just open up a world of possibilities to a reader, but, instead, brings the reader into that world? And what about the people for whom books are a central part of their lives? How do they interact with, or perhaps, include books in their magic, their schemes, their lives? How do they protect the infinite possibilities that books store and provide?

This bundle of about 260,000 words from 10 short stories and 2 novels includes explorations of books and the world of books that include magical, supernatural, science fiction or speculative elements. Book nerds will love these tales, but that enjoyment might also come with a twist that makes you think twice about the ultimate power held by that seemingly benevolent tome sitting on your bookshelves or lurking in your Kindle reader.

Save more than 30% off of the regular price by getting all of these awesome book-themed titles bundled together.

Pay a minimum of $6.99 USD and receive all 10 ebooks.

Order here!

 

Scams, Spams, and Nasty Schemes

Karen McCullough Posted on by

Author’s Note: This was first posted on the Classic and Cozy blog, but the subject is important, so I’m reposting it here.

It’s a jungle out there…and in here, too. I’m talking about the Internet, and right now, email specifically. You just can’t be too careful when dealing with email.

Because I’m both an author and a web designer, my main email address is pretty well-known across the Internet. Certainly the spammers and scammers know about it. I currently get 20-30 spam emails a day. Most of them are annoying, but pretty innocuous, trying to sell me goods or services I don’t need. The weight loss tips, get rich quick schemes, special tools, prescription drug, and great rates on shipping from China offers are aggravating mostly by their sheer bulk.

But some of them are less innocuous. By now the Nigerian prince or defecting diplomat scheme is so well-known as to be the butt of numerous jokes. But people fell for it. Plenty of them. And, having seen the amount of money to be made, the schemers and scammers have moved on to more sophisticated tricks.

For a while I got five or six notices a day from various banks that I had an urgent message and needed to log into my account. Generally poor grammar and wording were a dead giveaway that those messages didn’t really come from their supposed senders, along with the fact that I didn’t actually have an account at any of those banks.

The first time I got an email purporting to be from one of my web clients saying she’d been mugged in some foreign country and needed help, I was both concerned and suspicious. I hadn’t heard of this scheme, so I actually responded with a request for more information. The reply I got was so unlike my client, I knew it was a scam and ignored all further emails related to it. I later got four more versions of that scam relating to other friends or clients.

The scammers are getting better at it, though. The emails telling me I’ve won a $50 gift certificate from Amazon look very legit. The messages saying there is a problem with my Paypal account carry the Paypal logo and are nicely worded. It’s only when you put your cursor over the link to see where it’s really going that you can tell they’re trying to get you to enter your Amazon or Paypal login credentials on a page that most definitely isn’t attached to either site.

Any attempt to get someone to click on a bad email link or open a malware-laced document is generally called a Phishing attack. But it gets worse. What are sometimes called “spear-Phishing attacks,” where the link or attached document is tailored to a specific environment, can cause an unfortunate click to produce widespread devastation.

I’ve gotten emails purporting to be business documents from a co-worker. I don’t work in a corporate environment, but if I did, an email from purchasing@suchandsuch.com claiming to have a spending report attached might trick me into opening it or clicking on a link.

Those are perilous emails because a click on a bad link or document can give hackers access to an entire corporate network. Thousands of businesses have been hit with ransomware attacks. The city of Atlanta’s computer network was shut down for weeks when held for ransom. My local church’s computer system was also disabled for several days due to ransomware. Those attacks can almost always be traced back to someone clicking on a bad link or opening a document containing malware. The infamous hacking of the Democratic party started with a Phishing attack.

A few days ago, though, I got an email that topped all the others for me personally in terms of the general nastiness of the scam. It was basically a blackmail attempt. It said that I’d visited a porn site and while I was there, the sender had installed malware on my computer, turned on my web cam, caught me in a compromising action on the camera, stolen all my contacts information and would send the video to all of them if I didn’t pay their demand of sending 3,000 Bitcoin to the sender.

I’m an author. I do research all over the web, including some of its shadier corners. I’ve probably even been to a porn site a time or two, though I tend not to linger in such places. Otherwise I knew that the rest was pretty much impossible (in my case), so I didn’t take the threat very seriously. I suppose there are people for whom some of this might be a real possibility and such a note would worry them.

What did actually give me pause was that the subject line contained my name and an old password I once used in a couple of places. I imagine the sender got that from somewhere on the dark web, where all sorts of hacked data, including some from famous huge data breaches like the Yahoo and Equifax debacles, is available for sale. And don’t kid yourself. Your information is up there somewhere, too.

I no longer use that password, and haven’t for some time, but this was a good reminder of why you should never use the same password in different places and why it’s a good idea to change those passwords occasionally.

Apparently I wasn’t alone in receiving this email, according to this article I found, which echoes the conclusions about it I came to about it:
https://www.businessinsider.com/new-email-scam-uses-old-password-fake-porn-threats-webcam-video-bitcoin-2018-7

Stay safe, my friends!

Some email safety tips:

• Don’t open emails from unknown sources.
• Never, ever open an attachment unless you’re very sure of what it is and who sent it to you.
• Keep automatic open of attachments turned off in your email program.
• Don’t click on links in emails unless you’re very sure of what it is. Remember that your friends’ email accounts can be hijacked, and spammers can spoof the names and email addresses of people you know into the “From” field.
• Any time you get an email from a bank or financial institution saying you have a message, don’t click the link. Go to the institution’s site and log in. If the message is legit it will be posted to your account.
• Keep your computer’s virus protection up to date.
• Don’t log into your email account on open, public wi-fi.
• Change all of your passwords periodically and never use the same one at two different places.

 

Mystery in the Midlands

Karen McCullough Posted on by

This past weekend I was fortunate to attend the Mystery in the Midlands conference held in Columbia, South Carolina.

Because I didn’t want to drive through Charlotte on a Friday afternoon or evening, I elected to get up early on Saturday (the day of the conference) and head south. Fortunately I left plenty of time for the three-hour drive because even on Saturday morning there were slow spots on the highways around the Charlotte area, particularly where they’re constructing a gigantic new interchange between Interstates 77 and 85. But the worst was a traffic jam just north of Charlotte, where a truck had gone off the highway and into the trees. The four police cars, three fire trucks, several tow-trucks, and an ambulance lined up on the side of the road forced two lanes of traffic to merge into one. Even at 6 a.m. on Saturday that had traffic backed up for several miles.

My books got a nice display at the bookseller’s table.

But I made it there by 8:15, in time to get my consignment books to the bookseller, get coffee, and say hello to a few old friends before the first session started.

The initial part of the day consisted of three different tracks and I chose to go to Jaden Terrell’s workshop on “Don’t Sweat it, Just Get it Written.” Although I have multiple completed novels under my belt, I felt a need to review the basics again and the workshop was very helpful. If you ever have a chance to take this workshop, I highly recommend it.

The Getting Real in Crime Fiction Panel

Then there was a panel discussion on Getting Real with Crime Fiction, where the panelists compared crime fiction with real life. These are authors who have been either law enforcement, military, or lawyers. So many interesting things came out of this one that I think I’m going to do another entire post on it.


That was followed by an interview with author Elaine Viets. I enjoyed this hugely. Elaine is just as much a hoot in person as the characters in her books. Her Dead-End Jobs series of cozy mysteries is a favorite of mine. You can tell she has done the jobs she describes in her books and does she ever have STORIES!

Lunch included a fun game of “Guess the Author.” We’d each provided a little-known fact about ourselves. The other participants would try to guess who it was, and then we each got a couple of minutes to tell a bit about ourselves and our books.

(For anyone who might be interested: my factoid was that I was a gymnast in high school and college. I wanted to use something that people might actually be able to figure out – it’s a mystery writers’ conference, after all—and several people did. The fact that I’m barely five feet tall and still on the slim side despite weighing twenty-plus pounds more than the 100 pounds I was back in those days, provides a pretty strong clue.)

That’s me down at the far end.

My panel on writing short stories happened after lunch and included a distinguished group of authors, Warren Moore, Claire Count, Robert Mangeot, and Elaine Viets, with Paula Gail Benson moderating. We had some good discussion on the differences between writing novels and short stories, the challenges and rewards of writing short, the resurgence of the market and where and how to market them.

The next panel on Sizzling Characters was very informative. A group of wonderful authors (Maggie Toussaint, Raegan Teller and Stacy Allen, with Riley Miller moderating) talked about fictional characters that stood out to them and how they tried to make their own characters memorable.

The day wrapped up with a panel on Genres of mystery fiction, another interesting panel. I had no idea there were so many different subgenres of the mystery and thrillers. Again there was enough material to spark another blog post.

Knowing I’d be too tired to drive back from Columbia to Greensboro after it, I’d arranged to spend the night in the nearby Marriott. I ran into old friend Maggie Toussaint and new friend Rebecca Butler in the dining area/lounge and we had a very pleasant dinner. Afterward, I retired upstairs, caught the end of a replay of the penultimate day of the Tour de France (another blog post coming) and fell asleep.

I woke earlier than I expected Sunday but felt surprisingly refreshed. The drive back Sunday morning was blessedly uneventful. I’ve found that listening to podcasts helps the time pass more quickly when driving and I had several writing-related ones saved on my phone for just that purpose. Got home in time to watch the last stage of the Tour.

All in all, Saturday was a very good day and well worth the time and expense of being there. I sold a few books, got to spend time with old friends I don’t see as often as I’d like, and made some new ones. I learned a few things, and absorbed a lot to think about, but most of all I came away with renewed enthusiasm for my own writing. You can’t put a price tag on that!

It Wasn’t Exactly the Christmas I Wanted…

Karen McCullough Posted on by

(I originally posted this on the Classic and Cozy blog, but wanted to repost here.)

But it was the one I got, and it was terrific in its own way. Just not the way I planned.

It’s always a better Christmas when there are children around, so I was elated when my daughter said she, her husband, and four little boys would be able to come to our place for the holiday. That meant a lot of packing for them, and a ten-hour drive with the four boys (ages 6, 4, 2 ½, and 6 months) in car seats in a mini-van. It’s a pretty big venture for them.

The three older boys playing at the kitchen island.

But come they did. I had things mostly ready – guest rooms, toys for the kids, high chair and portable crib for the baby, plus all the Christmas decorations. Gifts were bought and wrapped. We had plans to visit several relatives in the week following Christmas and to take the boys to a few of their favorite places. The back yard was ready with toys so they could play outside, since winters are generally pretty mild in central North Carolina.

My daughter warned me on her final phone call the day before they left that she and the baby weren’t feeling well and seemed to be developing colds. I assured her that wasn’t going to be a problem.  Little did I know…  (Writers love to use that particular cliché, and it’s so appropriate here.)

They arrived a few days before Christmas, and things started going sideways almost immediately.  The weather took a turn for the bitter, making it too cold for the boys to spend much time out-of-doors. In fact, temperatures remained ridiculously low for this area throughout their visit, making any outing an adventure in endurance. I’m talking daytime highs in the 20s and lows at night in single digits. Biting wind at times.

But I had a good supply of toys, crayons, markers, scratch paper, and books to keep them entertained. They’re good about playing on their own. Until all three of the older boys got sick as well a couple of days after they arrived. Then their Dad caught it. And my husband and I came down with it the day after Christmas.

This wasn’t the normal, garden-variety cold either, of the sort that makes you sniffle for a couple of days. We don’t think it was the flu, since none of had the achy muscles and joints, bad headaches, and nausea that go along with flu, but it was a really ferocious cold that made people feel generally icky for close to a week, then left us all congested, coughing, sneezing, and running for an additional week to ten days.

We had to cancel all the planned visits to relatives, forego the church services we wanted to attend, and forget some of the other places I wanted to take the boys. The kids were frequently, and understandably, cranky, mopey, and whiney.

On top of that, the bug exacerbated a continuing throat problem in my son-in-law, which forced a trip to the emergency room – right as we were getting ready to sit down to Christmas dinner. And a day or two after that the bug set off the six-year-old’s asthma. Fortunately they’d brought along his medicine and a friend lent us a nebulizer, but his parents didn’t get much sleep that night. In fact, sleep was in short supply for them for most of the visit with four wheezy, snuffly, stuffed-up children who all had trouble sleeping.

We blew through (literally) about 20 packages of wipes (for diaper changes and cleaning up runny noses) and several boxes of Kleenex for the adults.

And yet, amid all the chaos and changes of plans, there were some wonderful moments and great blessings.

Present-opening on Christmas morning went well for the most part. We do stockings first, and each of the boys got a foam play sword stuffed in the top. The two-year-old was so excited about the play sword, he went off brandishing it, and Christmas could have ended right there for him. We had to call him back and remind him there were other things in his stocking.

And there was the moment when the six-year-old unwrapped a present and found a book he desperately wanted. He literally shook with excitement and his face lit up with the kind of joy that, if bottled, could solve many of the world’s major problems.

The assistance of my older daughter, who lives nearby and has grown children of her own who were spending the holiday with their other grandmother, was invaluable during the chaos of Christmas day, and my sister-in-law Page was also helpful and understanding when dinner didn’t go according to plan.

At the end, they had to extend their say here a few days because of ice and snow clogging the roads back home on the day they’d planned to leave. That, too, was a blessing in disguise. With the boys finally mostly healthy again, we were able to do some of the things I’d wanted to do earlier, including outings to Safari Nation, a terrific indoor playground, the library for story time, and the Greensboro Children’s Museum.

Perhaps the biggest blessing was contained in something my daughter told me shortly before they left. In thanking me for all the help (though I still don’t feel like it was that much), she said that if they’d been at home with everyone sick, Christmas would’ve been pretty dreary. Being with us meant she didn’t have to handle everything herself, could grab a few extra naps she might not have had at home, and had extra hands to help with caring for the children. That made a huge difference for her.

And I realized I was glad that she and the family were here, illness and all. Together we all had a better Christmas holiday than any of us would’ve had on our own.

No Good Deed Goes Unpunished

Karen McCullough Posted on by

A couple of months ago I noticed that my bill from the local power company, Duke Energy was a bit lower than I expected. Not a lot but somewhat. However, we’d just installed a bunch of energy-saving light bulbs and I thought that might account for the lower bill. Also we’d been out of town for part of the month.

The next month I got a bill that was much lower than usual, like about one quarter of what I expected. I knew something was wrong.

Sometimes I think I’m too honest for my own good. Others have suggested that if Duke Energy was making a mistake I should just enjoy the ride and see how long it would go on. Did I? No. I called the company.

I told them I was probably the only person in the world to complain that their bill was too low, but I suspected that my meter had a problem. They promised to send someone out, and the service technician showed up a few days later and replaced the meter.

My reward for that honesty?  A few weeks later I got a bit that was about three times normal.

Thanks, Duke Energy. You know how to reward customers who try to be honest with you.

Bye Bye Baseball

Karen McCullough Posted on by

Most people who know me know that I’m a sports fan. I love pro football, college basketball, and baseball in particular.  While watching Major League baseball on TV is fun, I can only take so much of it at a time. But I love going to games.

Unfortunately getting to games at either of the two major league teams nearest to us is hugely expensive. We’re just about halfway between Atlanta and Washington, D.C., and we have been to both Braves and Nationals games. But that’s a special treat due to the cost of travel, hotels, tickets, parking, concessions, etc.

Greensboro’s ball park

Greensboro, where I live, has an A-level minor league team in a really nice new ballpark, and going to those games is ridiculously inexpensive and totally fun. mMy husband and I get to as many of them as we can. The baseball isn’t always as polished as in the major leagues but it can be exciting and sometimes even wonderful.

The Greensboro Grasshoppers are a class-A affiliate of the Miami Marlins, and we’ve seen a number of their current players pass through here. Marcel Ozuna, Christian Yelich, and J.T. Realmuto all spent a year playing here. Giancarlo Stanton still holds the South Atlantic League record for home runs in a season and also hit the longest home run recorded in the stadium.

Along with watching future major leaguers play, you can get one-dollar hot dogs and hamburgers on Dollar Monday, one and two-dollar beverages on Thirsty Thursday, and fireworks after most weekend games.

Miss LouLou Gehrig retrieves a bat dropped by a hitter.

Our team has a few other unique features. The most charming is a set of black Lab dogs who have functioned as ball and bat dogs during games (bringing buckets of fresh balls to the umpire and retrieving bats after a hitter makes contact and tosses his bat aside). That used to be Miss Babe Ruth’s job until she retired a couple of years ago and Miss LouLou Gehrig took over.

Another of them, Master Yogi Berra, has been part of the entertainment for many years. He holds the distinction of being the first (and probably still the only) dog to be ejected from a game. After a between-innings game in which he chases a ball while a fan runs the bases, Yogi stopped to do some business on the field and a peeved umpire threw him out. Unfortunately Master Yogi passed away in August from cancer.


The mascot is a bizarre creature called Guilford the Grasshopper. But the team isn’t really named for an insect. Greensboro’s main claim to historical interest is that it was the site of the Battle of Guilford Courthouse, a Revolutionary war battle that helped turn the tide of the war and led to Cornwallis’s surrender a few months later. One type of small cannon used in the battle was known as a Grasshopper.

Alas, the season is over now. Minor leagues complete their schedule early in September. The good news was that the Grasshoppers won the division in the second half of the season, which put them in the playoff.  The bad news is they dropped two games in a row in the playoffs and were out just that quickly.

But it was a great ride while it lasted and I’m eager for next season.