The Second Review

I am still awaiting the second review of my dad's book. I emailed my hump pilot veteran just to make sure that he had indeed received the book in the mail. He quickly emailed back that he did receive it, but that he has been traveling and hasn't had a chance to look at it yet. I'm not sure when he'll get to it, but at this point I am really not in any hurry. I've been thinking that I may want to time the release of the book to a particular military event anyway, like the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Obviously I missed the boat (ha, ha) for having it ready in time for this Veteran's Day.

On an unrelated topic, I have Google Alerts set up to notify me any time something having to do with house history research is published on the web. Yesterday and today I received a lot of hits, and a number of the articles concerned organizing your house history research. As that is a topic which is covered both in my book and in an ezinearticles.com article that I wrote, I was interested in what this author had to say. Imagine my surprise when I clicked on the first article and found my ezine article quoted nearly verbatim! As it turns out, all of these articles had the same lady's name as author. So tonight I have been systematically going to each website where the article appears and leaving first a comment to the "author" to cease and desist, and then a second comment to the host of the website telling them to either take the article down or give credit to me as the original author of the article. Of course she has no website of her own or contact information listed so that I can communicate with her directly. She has a long list of articles she has supposedly written, and I can't help but wonder if she stole all of the others as well. I can't believe the audacity of some people!

A Sign of the "Times"

The assistant editor of the Webster-Kirkwood Times and one of their photographers came to my house this morning to talk to me about my book "Who's Been Sleeping in My Bed(room)?" The photographer snapped a number of pictures outside in front of our house, and then more inside at the dining room table with me holding up my book. The she headed out for her next assignment.

Marty Harris immediately put me at ease as she began by talking about the history of my house, and my adventures in trying to obtain a century home plaque. This then led to a discussion of why I wrote the book. I explained the long, sometimes tedious process of searching for appropriate records, and the lack of anyone or thing to guide you. She asked for some how-to pointers that she could put in the article for others who want to get started in the process. We talked about the other properties I have been researching, and she asked if I was doing this as a business. I told her I have enough to do with the other businesses we own. (Put in a plug for ORMI if she ever needs a resource for composting.)

In preparation for Marty's arrival I finally came up with a Media Release I am somewhat comfortable with, so I gave her that along with an author bio. I also gave her a copy of an article I had written several years ago on how I researched my house, and provided her with the information about my talk on March 21 at the Webster Groves Historical Society. Hopefully we'll get a little plug for the meeting.

All in all, she was here over an hour and we covered some good material. I'm a little disheartened though, because I think she is going to put this article in the Real Estate special section that they do once a year. No one reads that except people looking for a house (and how many are out there right now?) and realtors. Bummer! But what are you going to do when it's free?