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11
Bar & Grill [Public] / Re: The Garden Thread that two people wanted
« Last post by djmills on April 16, 2025, 07:28:49 AM »
I was given strawberry runners and (stupid me) I planted them. The strawberries were large and sweet and my hens loved them. I never ate any, after tasting one.
The strawberries attracted leeches and slugs, and a small lizard.
Next thing they had runners and the runners had runners. They took up an entire side garden. I tried pulling out most of them. More grew so I poisoned them. Three months later I now notice two or three trying to grow again, so will also poison them when the rain stops.
I believe strawberries are a noxious weed. :-)
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Bar & Grill [Public] / Re: The Garden Thread that two people wanted
« Last post by Jeff Tanyard on April 16, 2025, 05:13:11 AM »
Quote from: Post-Crisis D on April 16, 2025, 02:25:41 AM
Quote from: Jeff Tanyard on April 15, 2025, 12:33:34 PM
When they're about the size shown in the photo, they don't have any taste.  (I've eaten several of them, so I have a pretty good sample set.)

So, black nightshade berries you'll taste but spit out rather than eat


They didn't taste good.  Sort of queasy-sour like tomatoes, and I don't like tomatoes.   :shrug


Quote
...but wild growing berries in bright red poison warning colors you'll eat because they look like little strawberries?  :icon_think:





Quote
Well, I'll just warn you that if you get one of those "I've been hired to kill you" eMails, I think you best not eat anything resembling strawberries for 72 hours.  Just saying . . .


I'll keep an eye out for hit men.   :ices_angel_g:
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Bar & Grill [Public] / Re: The Garden Thread that two people wanted
« Last post by Post-Crisis D on April 16, 2025, 02:25:41 AM »
Quote from: Jeff Tanyard on April 15, 2025, 12:33:34 PM
When they're about the size shown in the photo, they don't have any taste.  (I've eaten several of them, so I have a pretty good sample set.)

So, black nightshade berries you'll taste but spit out rather than eat, but wild growing berries in bright red poison warning colors you'll eat because they look like little strawberries?  :icon_think:

Well, I'll just warn you that if you get one of those "I've been hired to kill you" eMails, I think you best not eat anything resembling strawberries for 72 hours.  Just saying . . .
14
Publisher's Office [Public] / Re: More folks need to go indie - Tradpub in Poland
« Last post by Bill Hiatt on April 15, 2025, 10:47:00 PM »
Publishers are still the way to go if you dream of bestseller lists and movie deals--but most trad published authors don't get either.

Self publishing may be the best shot at making a living. Data from Data Guy (before he vanished behind a paywall) suggested that a few years ago. But most self publishers don't get there.

The bottom line is that any road is going to be a hard road. Write because you love to write. Keep your day job until you've made a living on writing for several months. Celebrate whatever success you get. Have reasonable expectations. These are the keys to a happy life as a writer.
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Bar & Grill [Public] / Re: The Garden Thread that two people wanted
« Last post by LilyBLily on April 15, 2025, 01:25:19 PM »
I am not convinced those are the true wild strawberries, the fraises du bois that I picked as a child and that taste absolutely lovely. There's another item that looks very like them but actually is larger. Kind of darker and furry, too. I will talk to my family plant expert tomorrow and get that name. I know he has eaten the lookalikes and said they're flavorless. Also harmless.
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Editors & Proofreaders [Public] / Re: Developmental Editing for fantasy novels
« Last post by Jeff Tanyard on April 15, 2025, 12:36:37 PM »
Welcome to the site, Ashleigh.   :)
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Bar & Grill [Public] / Re: The Garden Thread that two people wanted
« Last post by Jeff Tanyard on April 15, 2025, 12:33:34 PM »
Here are some photos taken on the afternoon of April 14th.

Light blue Bearded Iris:





Yellow Bearded Iris:








Holly flowers:   :banana:





As I've mentioned before, the holly is a particular favorite of mine due to the flowers' aroma.  It's also a favorite of the bees, and when the tree's in bloom, they're all over it.  I like to stand under the branches, inhale the aroma, and let the constant drone of buzzing bees lull me into a pleasant zen-like state.   :cool:


Wild strawberry:





Before anyone gets too excited about the strawberries, here are a few unfortunate facts...

When they're about the size shown in the photo, they don't have any taste.  (I've eaten several of them, so I have a pretty good sample set.)  If I give them more time to grow bigger, then the squirrels and other critters will eat them before I can pick them.  And they're growing in the shade, so they're unlikely to fully ripen anyway even if the critters weren't an issue.  So they're basically just an interesting weed.   :confused:

I have no idea how they got there, by the way.  I certainly didn't put them there.  This is only the second or third year I've noticed them.  I can only guess that some animal pooped out some seeds after eating some strawberries somewhere else.   :shrug
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Promotion Signup Desk [Public] / Fantasy Newsletter Builder @ BookFunnel April 16 - May 16
« Last post by C. Gockel on April 15, 2025, 06:55:44 AM »
Fantasy Newsletter Builder @ BookFunnel
Click Here: https://dashboard.bookfunnel.com/bundles/board/gxymd4ido2
April 16 - May 16

This is for all fantasy and paranormal EXCEPT erotica. No nekkid' man chests. All mailing list sizes are welcome, but only authors with share reps of 100+ may have more than THREE ebooks.

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Publisher's Office [Public] / Re: More folks need to go indie - Tradpub in Poland
« Last post by LilyBLily on April 15, 2025, 04:02:40 AM »
Back in the day, when a romance writer would get her first Harlequin contract and an advance of $1,200, the received wisdom was to plow it all back into promotion. The idea was to create enough sell-through to encourage Harlequin to offer a multi-book contract. At that time, back end royalties for a simple Harlequin could be around $18,000, so diverting the advance to promotion efforts was not using up a large percentage of your total earnings for the book. What I've heard in recent years is that the advance is all you'll get. A far different picture, and I understand the royalty break has hardly budged this century, too.

There remain today good reasons for dealing with trad pubs: them getting your books into physical bookstores, them getting you reviews from big deal reviewers and possibly attention from big name media, and them selling sub rights--especially to film/television/streaming as well as other markets. The value of that may not have a direct dollar figure but it is substantial. But if they don't do anything beyond getting your books into bookstores, they aren't doing their full job. At a conference I went to recently, a veteran publicist said the typical publisher's publicist has 30 titles to work on at a time and job churn is major. It follows that if yours isn't the lead title that month, you're not going to get much attention at all from these overworked people. So self-publishing and self-promotion don't seem like such a bad deal after all. You probably will end up doing more for your book than the publisher would.
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Bar & Grill [Public] / Re: Silly Spammers
« Last post by Post-Crisis D on April 15, 2025, 03:01:32 AM »
Well, the assassin apparently missed me.

But now the international arm of the FBI is after me for the "juvenile porn" on my computer featuring "women and minor children."  Apparently, the police in New Delhi gave up on chasing me down which isn't surprising since they only work 24/5 so how serious could they be about catching people?

But, also, the international arm of the FBI only works 24/5 too so I guess they aren't that serious either.

Still, it's the inconsistencies that bug me.  Like "juvenile porn" involving "women."  And you have to respond in order to find out what the court has ordered against you.  That's not how things work.

If I were a scammer, my inclination would be to make it more believable as you'd think that would trick more people into falling for it.  But, I guess I don't have a criminal mind because, from what I've read, the inconsistencies are more or less intentional.  That is, that if you fall for the scam despite the inconsistencies, you're a more gullible mark for them.  If you think the New Delhi Police are going to come after you in America or if you think you have to respond to an eMail to find out the details of a court order against you, they've already gotten a hook in you whereas the rest of us are going, now wait a minute here . . .  Also, if you do have child porn on your computer involving women and minor children, well, you may get panicky the first time you receive such an eMail.

Actually, if you were the unscrupulous type, that might be a pretty good scam.  Set up a child porn website, wait a few months, and then send these blackmail eMails to people that accessed the site months earlier.  They'll have forgotten where they downloaded by then and they will have such material on their computers so they'd be prime targets.  Naturally, I am not suggesting anyone do this.  I am just saying that could be a lucrative scam for the unsavory types.  Feel free to use the idea in your next novel though.
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