Diane Banti of Lake Wales, FL! Our December Quiz winner of the $25 Amazon gift card. You can be our next winner.
Sign up on our site and answer this month’s crime fiction quiz question. Once you sign up, you are eligible every month your name remains on the list. Get on the list and give yourself a shot. https://valeriewebster.com/do-you-know
Thanks to The New York Times for publishing legitimate local and national organizations collecting funds and other donations for those hard hit by the recent mid-west tornadoes. Be generous – and be grateful.
Local
Brother’s Brother Foundation, a Pittsburgh-based organization that provides disaster relief, is accepting donations so it can donate to food banks in Arkansas and Kentucky. It is also sending items to victims and emergency crews in affected areas.
Taylor County Bank in Campbellsville, Ky., is accepting donations by mail to its fund for tornado victims. Its mailing address is P.O. Box 200 Campbellsville, Ky., 42719.
The Team Western Kentucky Tornado Relief Fund, created by Gov. Andy Beshear, is collecting donations for victims in the western portion of the state.
National
AmeriCares, a health-focused relief and development organization, has sent an emergency response team to Kentucky and has offered assistance to health care facilities in several states. The organization is accepting donations to help fund these efforts.
CARE, an organization that works with impoverished communities, is collecting money to provide food, cash and clean water to the tornado victims.
Convoy of Hope, an organization that feeds the hungry, is asking for donations to help the survivors across the affected states.
A Feeding America location in Kentucky is raising funds to help provide people with “ready-to-eat bags of food.”
Global Empowerment Mission, a disaster-relief organization, has partnered with local groups and is raising money to help its team on the ground in Kentucky.
GoFundMe has created a centralized hub with verified fund-raisers to help those affected by the tornadoes. It will be updated with new fund-raisers as they are verified.
International Medical Corps, an organization that provides emergency medical services, is raising funds to give people shelter and essential items.
The Red Cross has opened shelters and is asking people to make appointments to give blood. Both its national arm and its local chapter in Western Kentucky are collecting donations.
The Salvation Army is soliciting donations to help tornado victims in Arkansas, Kentucky and Tennessee.
Team Rubicon, a disaster-relief organization, is raising money to help its team of military veterans and volunteers clear roads in Western Kentucky.
The United Way of Kentucky is asking for donations to provide support services for families in the state who were affected by the tornadoes.
Great Gifts for Readers on Your Holiday List
We enjoy hearing the gossip about the rich and infamous. This book tells it all about the authors we loved – stuff we never learned in English class.
From the Unemployed Philosopher’s Guild. Start your day with some of the greatest opening gambits ever penned.
From the Unemployed Philosopher’s Guild. The Guild offers you those fab literary finishes as well.
Writer, author, poet or if you just love writing, slip on this t-shirt to feel proud and be cool.
Book lovers may swear they’d rather read from a book rather than a screen. Even those folks have to admit traveling is more convenient with this six-inch, high-res, waterproof Kindle reader.
This plush book holder makes a thoughtful gift for friends, family and colleagues. It’s great for Kindle, iPad, tablets, ebook readers and it can even double as a travel pillow.
Let’s start with a definition of phishing. It is the practice of tricking Internet users, through the use of deceptive email messages, phone calls or websites, into revealing personal or confidential information which can then be used to perpetuate identity theft, access sensitive data and/or steal financial assets from the victim.
Email messages employ “spoofing.” A hacker sends emails that appear to originate from trustworthy sources. They may appear to be sent from legitimate companies, from friends, family members or coworkers.
Hackers also spoof websites. They accomplish this via a technique called URL “cloaking” or “masking” Through the use of specialized scripts of computer code, hackers can cover up a legitimate URL with one that is associated with a trusted website.
The most common phishing scams involve bank or credit card notifications, unsolicited tech support notifications, “receipts” of high-priced items that you supposedly purchased, cut off of a service you use such as email or Amazon or even black mail attempts threatening to “out” your viewing of pornographic sites.
Common features to be aware of in email phishing:
Spotting the suspects:
Here are a few good ways to explore without getting snagged by the “phisher”:
Extricating yourself from the clutches of internet thieves can be costly in more than one way. Identity theft can take years of legal work to resolve. Be aware of the many ways internet bad guys try to steal from you.
Sisters in Crime is sponsoring NaNoWriMo this November. They will schedule write-ins and weekly Twitter sprints to help you get to 50K words. They will also make other resources and support available.
The #SinC50K will offer:
Join and SinC will send you more information as November 1 approaches! Even if you’re not a member, SinC allows for non-members to participate if you’ve created a Guest – Non-Member account and signed in
Need a contact? Julie Hennrikus [email protected]
National Novel Writing Month began in 1999 as a challenge: to write 50,000 words of a novel in thirty days. Chris Baty started the project in with 21 participants in the San Francisco Bay area. Each year since on November 1, thousands of people around the world begin to write, determined to end the month with 50,000 words of a new novel. By just the following year, participants or “Wrimos” swelled to over 5,000. Participation skyrocketed.
NaNoWriMo became a nonprofit in 2005; their programs support writing fluency and education. Their website hosts more than a million writers, serving as a social network with author profiles, personal project libraries, and writing buddies. NaNoWriMo tracks words for writers like Fitbit tracks steps. With the help of over 900 volunteers in thousands of partnering libraries and community centers NaNo hosts real-world writing events in cities worldwide.
Hundreds of NaNoWriMo novels have been traditionally published. They include Sara Gruen’s Water for Elephants, Erin Morgenstern’s The Night Circus, Hugh Howey’s Wool, Rainbow Rowell’s Fangirl, Jason Hough’s The Darwin Elevator, and Marissa Meyer’s Cinder.
Each year, authors offer mentorship to participants. Past author mentors have included Gene Luen Yang, Roxane Gay, Kacen Callender, John Green, Andy Weir, N. K. Jemisin, and Veronica Roth.
Since NaNoWriMo is used to get people writing, the rules are kept broad and straightforward:
To win NaNoWriMo, participants must write an average of approximately 1,667 words per day (69 per hour, 1.2 per minute) in November to reach the goal of 50,000 words written toward a novel. Organizers of the event say that the aim is to get people to start writing, using the deadline as an incentive to get the story going and to put words to paper. There is no fee to participate in NaNoWriMo; registration is only required for novel verification.
No official prizes are awarded for length, quality, or speed, though self-awarded badges are available on the site. Anyone who reaches the 50,000-word mark is declared a winner. Beginning November 20, participants can submit their novel to be automatically verified for length and receive a printable certificate, an icon they can display on the web, and inclusion on the list of winners.
Valerie Webster and Driven: A Rita Mars Thriller in the spotlight via Author of the Day interview.
