Time to Go to Your Window and Look for Flying Pigs

Yep, it’s finally happened. I’ve stepped boldly into the twenty-first century. No, I didn’t get one of those new-fangled electric cars… and I haven’t upgraded to a smartphone (I’m still firmly – and sentimentally – attached to my Kyocera flip phone). However, I did do two things this past week I never really expected to do – at least not anytime soon.

The first monumental occurrence was my appearance as a guest on a podcast. I’d met one of the hosts during a book-launch webinar presented by publishing maven extraordinaire Alexa Bigwarfe (the driving force behind the annual Women in Publishing Summit). In the Zoom chat, fellow attendee S.D. Huston happened to mention she hosted a podcast. I contacted her after the webinar to learn more about it and ask about being a guest. We exchanged emails, one thing led to another and bingo, bango, bongo, bob’s-yer-uncle, I got scheduled for a recording date.

They sent me a list of questions (so I could be prepared with responses and not feel like a total dolt during the recording) and I provided a few questions I enjoy answering; then I waited for August 11 to roll around. Admittedly, I stayed up way too late the night before, but I slept late the morning of the interview and even forwent my daily jaunt to the pool. Anyone who knows me knows how seldom that happens! I didn’t want to be yawning through the interview; that would have made a horrible impression.

Anxiety aside, my primary concern that morning was the stability of our internet connection. The only thing I truly dislike about life in rural Tennessee is the internet. The words iffy, tenuous and lousy all come to mind. The better of our two providers (we need two because hubby and I both work from home and rely on stable internet) is a satellite connection. The only problem with the satellite connection is that when it rains, it tends to drop. We’d had rain most of the week and service had already dropped on my husband once during a meeting that morning. Preparing for the worst, I let the hosts know about the potential for a drop, as it was still raining as our scheduled interview time approached. If that happened, they said they’d just wait ’til I was able to reconnect.

Fortunately, the rain stopped, the internet connection behaved itself, and we conducted our hour-long interview uninterrupted. We discussed everything from story ideas and marketing to cover art, editing and how to find – and work with – a professional editor (after all, I happen to know a thing or three about that). The hosts did extensive research. The episode is due to premiere Thursday, September 1. And because timing is everything (wouldn’t you know it?), our long-awaited Starlink equipment showed up this afternoon.

The second notable incident came as a result of my appearance on the Self Publishing Tips & Tricks podcast: I registered the web domain ritamreali.com. Don’t bother going there before September 1. You won’t find anything just yet – but I had to bite the proverbial bullet, because during the course of the podcast, I gave that web address as a location where folks could find my books. So you get three guesses as to what I’ll be doing all this week.

Maybe one of these years I’ll actually give in and buy a smartphone. But it won’t be anytime soon… at least not ’til I figure out how to get all the photos of my cat off the darn thing without emailing them to myself… one at a time. Hey, I already implied I was a technological dork. Did you really need to make me spell it out for you?

As if that weren’t sufficient evidence of my reluctance to embrace new technology, I could add I’m writing this post on a 12-year-old laptop whose colors went all wonky four days ago and I have no earthly idea what the image accompanying this post actually looks like. As near as I can tell, it’s someone using a keyboard in front of a trio of monitors: a laptop, what looks like a large-screen TV and a standard computer monitor. If not, my apologies, because that’s what I’d envisioned it as.

Meantime, I’ve got another laptop on which I can build my website. To that end, I’ve conjured several ideas about how I want my site to look, but I’m still entertaining other notions. What are your favorite author websites? Drop one or two into the comments. Thanks!

About the Author:
Rita M. Reali is an international award-winning author and longtime editor who most enjoys editing memoir, general fiction and romance, along with inspirational writing. She’s self-published five novels: Glimpse of Emerald, Diagnosis: Love, The Unintended Hero, Second Chances and Tender Mercies – the first five in the seven-volume Sheldon Family Saga. The sixth novel in the series, Brothers by Betrayal, is scheduled for an early 2024 release. Her first children’s book, The Purringest Kitty Finds His Home, is due out before Christmas. As a former disc jockey in her native Connecticut, Rita used to spend her days “talking to people who weren’t there” – a skill which transferred perfectly to her being an author. Now she talks to characters who aren’t there on “a little chunk of heaven in rural Tennessee.” Contact Rita.