Some things never change. I’m still sitting here trying to keep the cat off the keyboard, it makes typing a challenge. My day job is still driving me crazy but a lot of other things happened that were new and different.

I finished my type-in after more or less completing Holly Lisle’s How to Revise Your Novel course. I thought I would have to put my own eyes out after reading and typing in something like thirty or forty hand written pages. The end result? We’ll see. It may not be the great american novel but it’s complete and there were times when I didn’t think I’d ever be able to do it.

So what now? Well, thanks to the fabulous ladies at Do the Write thing for Nashville I won a full manuscript critique from the very generous Kim Lionetti at BookEnds. The bidding came down to the last two minutes. Can you say HEART ATTACK!  It’s amazing, there are still stars in my eyes from being over the moon about winning. And the money is going to such a good cause - Middle Tennessee Flood Relief.

Those ladies set what the irascible CEO Neil Patterson at Cerner calls BHAG’s Big Hairy Audacious Goals. They decided to hold an auction to raise money with donations from people in the publishing industry. In the process they raised more than $70,000.00. I suspect they had no idea how big or hairy or audacious it was going to be when they started. I think they kicked a ball hoping for a field goal and hit the moon instead.

Their auction is now over, but you can still contribute directly by donating to the Community Foundation of Middle Tennessee through the  dtwtfn blog and T-shirts are coming soon.

Now that I’ve completed a manuscript (well, a 2nd draft anyway) what am I going to do?

Go to Disney World!

Yes, because of the flooding the conference has been moved from Nashville to Orlando and Starwood’s Swan and Dolphin hotel. I’ve stayed there several times before for conferences. Anyone who is going will find a terrific conference venue. And there’s no way to complain about getting to spend the weekend before with one of my oldest friends enjoying the theme parks and celebrating our upcoming semi-centennial birthdays.

So now all I have left to do is wait.

Send the manuscript for critique.
For July to get here.

Start working on my next project.

I posted this on the CHAPLINK RWA loop.  You may find it helpful, or not. My memory is not perfect, but what I’ve written here I believe to be true.  If really important to you double check with the hotel. I can’t be held responsible, I’m a fiction writer. I may have made it up, but I tried to be accurate here.

I’ve been to a couple of conferences at the Swan and Dolphin.  My recollection is that there is wireless in many of the public areas and wired in the guest rooms.  The RWA info said it was free.  I don’t recall paying for it when I attended the IBM Rational user conferences.

Incidentally it is a very big facility and very nice. Plan on more walking than you did in DC or San Francisco. I believe it is not a Disney property but they do everything they can to put on a Disney like “good show”.  I never had any complaints about the rooms, food, or other facilities.  It is however on the pricey side as you would expect.  They do a lot of large conventions in this facility.  It is about the distance of two city blocks between the Swan and Dolphin.  I believe most of the ballrooms are at the Dolphin but there are also smaller meeting rooms over at the Swan as well.  If you have mobility issues plan ahead and ask before you go for anything special you might need.

Parking was about $8.00 per day the last time I was down there with a car. It may have only been for conference center parking.  It is possible that they waive the fee for guests of the hotel, I wouldn’t know for sure. I drove down in 2006 I think.  I went again in 2008 but flew that time.  The rooms are very nice, and in general the facility is beautiful.  The skinks running around the outside of the conference area will amuse some of you.  They’re tiny little lizards and they eat bugs.  They are our friends.

The hotel is adjacent to the Boardwalk area of the Disney Resort and it has lots of restaurants and shops that are not inside the parks (in other words, no cover charge there.)

There may have been a kind of convenience store but no grocery store that I recall unless it was over at the wilderness Campground (where the RV Park is) where some small amount of groceries may have been available. Milk, beverages, liquor (beer and wine anyway), packaged meats etc.  Don’t expect much in the way of fruits or vegetables but you can probably find some cereal etc.

For those of you thinking about the parks that haven’t been there before, ground transportation is abundant between all the hotels and parks and I’m pretty sure it’s free for those staying at any of the resorts and Swan and Dolphin.  It may not always be easy to figure out.  It took me about two hours to get from wilderness campground to Swan and Dolphin the first time I tried.  But once you figure it out it’s pretty easy (that trip narrowed down to about 45 minutes once I had the hang of the bus system).  There are water taxis and buses that will take you point to point between parks.

If you are an RV’er or even tent camper and want to save some money the campground is probably the nicest campground I’ve ever stayed at.  It’s safe, clean and has great services. I would feel very comfortable being there alone in my camper at night. It is quite a distance from the Swan and Dolphin though.  Wilderness Lodge and Wilderness Campground are two different locations however.  There is only camping at the campground.

Ask questions and I’ll do what I can to answer them.  The comments require approval so be patient to see them appear.

With the arrival of my W2 from my day job this week, taxes have been on my mind.  I’m fairly determined that this year I begin representing myself as a writer to the IRS.  I believe with the completion of a first draft manuscript, serious revision underway, I have submitted my work (in some form, mostly queries) to an agent and an editor (with negative results…sigh) that I have earned the right to call myself writer and receive credit for the things I’m doing to reach the goal of publication.  So with a bit of trepidation I step out onto the icy surface of IRS requirements and begin my adventure.

One of my local RWA chapters will have speakers from a tax preparation service presenting material next week but in the mean time I’m looking around for information to educate myself on what is permissible and what is not in terms of deductions.  I’ve found the following sites that reference author taxes and thought I’d share them here.

Note:  I do not have any qualification to determine that these sources are reliable, correct or otherwise represent the reality that is the IRS tax code.  But they were interesting and helpful to me.  Your tax return is your problem as mine belongs to me.

The Eclectics website provided a list of IRC (Internal Revenue Code?) sections that particularly refer to writers and authors.  It includes case studies sited in the code itself I think.  Including a reference to RWA Dues specifically and the “deductibility” of same.  I found this site particularly interesting.  Although it appears the sections were snipped and assembled from various documents, each does reference the code section that it applies to and I thought the cases were interesting.

As long as I was putting that site out there I thought it why not take it further, so I have asked uncle Google for his assistance and received the following links in return.

On ForWriters.com a history of the current tax code as it applies to authors is provided.

Publishlawyer.com provides a more summary account of what authors can expect in terms of categorizing themselves for tax purposes.

On a LSU faculty website I found this page that goes into some detail of hobby vs for profit pursuits.

On Gentlemanranters.com I found this “tax guide for journalists and authors.”

And don’t forget you can always ask the IRS or your local tax professional - Yeah, that guy standing on the corner in the green bedsheet and the statue of liberty foam crown - There’s an expert for you (Just being snarky, I’m sure the company he represents is exceedingly capable).  But seriously, I bet his boxers are sticking out of his pants that are way down around his dangly bits if you look beneath the verdigris (shudder).

I digress.  I’m sure the IRS has lots of publications that are certain to provide you with something to think about.

So that’s what I found on the internet.  Any other resources you care to add I’m happy to see.  Comments for first time posters are moderated so don’t be surprised if your comments don’t appear immediately.

Recently I’ve been in on a conversation that once again strayed to the seemingly archaic world of book inventory management.  Having spent about 20 years working in inventory management for health care I actually had a basis to form an opinion (instead of making shit up like I sometimes do - it’s an old family skill).  You know the economics of book inventory is a peculiar thing. Almost as peculiar as my mind which wandered all over this topic the other day and came to a rather duh conclusion.  Endure…uh, I mean enjoy.

Economies of Scale

It doesn’t cost much more to ship one book as it does two as long as you use the same box.  If you ship a full truckload it is more economical than a partial truckload (when you break it down to unit cost). So for the publisher it makes a certain amount of sense to ship more units to its distribution points(presumably wholesalers).  Besides if there are more copies available on the shelves more may sell - a gamble but not a crazy one up to a point.

The more copies you print the less each copy costs, because like most consumer goods the bulk of the manufacturing costs are in the setup not the materials.  Bookstore buyers have a no risk prospect in terms of over-ordering because the return policies are liberal.  It’s almost a consignment relationship (though there are monies flowing back and forth throughout the exchange I expect, so technically not consignment).

Handling Costs

Sure for the bookstores and wholesale distributors there are some costs associated with handling of inventory. There’s the lost opportunity cost for both, associated with shelving the wrong titles. But the book buyers can only make their best educated guess as to what will sell.  So the way that it currently works does make a lot of sense in some respects.

Inventory is an asset

On the balance sheet inventory is carried as an asset increasing the value of the organization so holding more inventory doesn’t hurt at the end of the month or the year.  No rewards there for keeping inventory low.  I don’t know if they even measure days on hand inventory levels in publishing.  It seems kind of silly to do that but who knows?  Ok there are financial offsets but that’s never stopped…Yikes I hope that returns charged against the author’s royalties are net of production costs.

Efficiency

Is it efficient?  Certainly not in a classic sense.  There’s too much waste as a byproduct for that.  But the supply chain is working as designed.  Manufacturers and wholesalers provide competitive terms (incentives) to buyers to encourage them to purchase more and everyone hopes that the need for returns will be low.  The capitalist system working in all it’s glory.

So why not switch?

In most manufacturing and sales environments it is in everyone’s benefit to keep the inventory levels low, the production matched to buyers needs, delivered just before or right when they need it.

In publishing, the buyers (you and me in this case) patterns are not as predictable and a large variety of units must be available for sale in order to maximize profits to the bookstores.  This requires an inventory of considerable size. A few of each, of many book titles makes you and me - the browsers - happy.

So now publishers must produce a large variety of titles.  And that is good for authors in that more stories are published. Whether the number of units (books) sold remains constant, despite the number of titles published is a question I don’t know the answer to. But if publishers could sell the same number of books producing 1 title versus a hundred it would make better financial sense to produce just the one title.  Authors be damned.

I’d be interested to know what book store inventory turns are.  (the number of times inventory turns over (is bought and sold) in a timed cycle - a year for example, which indicates the rate at which goods are converted into cash).

A table of AMR top 25 supply chain 2009 can be found here.  Go! Apple with 45 inventory turns per year woooo!

Just In Time versus Just In Case

Now if we decide okay, we’re going to go “just in time” on the inventory (a ridiculous notion, but let’s pretend).  Let’s put Espresso Book Machines (r) (a book printing/binding machine) in every bookstore and only put a dummy copy of the book on the shelf (like movies at Blockbuster).  Let’s assume that for the sake of argument the machines worked perfectly every time.

That would allow us to have a just enough inventory right when we needed it, but I’m guessing a higher per unit cost for supplies than traditional publishing.  After all smaller batches higher costs right?  All duplication costs absorbed by the bookstores, but the initial setup and formatting still charged to the publishers.  That would be reflected in the royalty the bookstore would pay the publisher.  Yes, royalty.  The bookstore would be licensed to use the image of the book in the Espresso.  Espresso conveniently tracks that.

But buyers couldn’t browse the books the way they do now by picking them up and handling them in the stores.  If the buyer had to wait at the counter while their books were produced (say 2 minutes per book) would they buy that impulse title that is displayed so conveniently today on an end cap?

Probably not, if they had to wait for yet another 2 minute copy to be pumped out of Espresso on top of the six or eight minutes for the three or four other books they are having produced.  After waiting in line for half an hour during the Christmas rush.  Which face it.  It’s the browsers who shop in stores at christmas time desperate to find that last minute gift.  Even if the store gave complementary lattes while you wait.  Well, maybe I’d wait if I had a free latte.

God forbid Rawlings starts the Harry Potter Junior series and you have to wait in line behind 150 ipod wearing pre-teens to get your copy of the latest J.D. Robb.  (Shop for books on line anyone?).

The Espresso Book Machine (r) should be portable otherwise book signings require the author to stand beside the machine as it pumps out each copy.  It would be a different world indeed. Not unlike signings at RT for the e-book authors I imagine, except to get the hard copy autographed it would have to be printed first.  Hmmm Author could just pre-sign a bazillion covers - NO WAIT, they’re printed as the book is printed so that wouldn’t work.  Now back to your regularly scheduled programming…

So does lower sales and the reduced costs associated with material handling save enough to justify a change to something like a just in time model?  I dunno but it seems unlikely given the costs of turning over a store to a print on demand model.

I’m guessing it’s not even an option for the big box stores but it might contribute to saving the independents.  Think about it.  The reason so many people flock to the big bookstore chains is variety (and location - Espresso can’t do anything about that).  Well, if the lines are shorter during the Christmas rush at the little shop around the corner than the big box stores hmmm…not much of a decision there.  With an espresso machine if the book wasn’t in stock…make it.  Sorry another digression.

Probably bookstores, wholesalers, and publishers will come to some compromise to lower costs by experimenting with the supply chain.  Unless we get some uber smart inventory geek who’s looking for something to fill his empty hours to model the supply chain. And as a business problem publishing supply chain probably isn’t that interesting.

Have I got this wrong? Anyone?

There appear to be several.  At least two different examples crossed my path this week showing how literature can be condensed into a savory broth of little volume but great substance. Ok, maybe one was from the week before but still…

The most recent was a video at reuters that described how two Chicago college students are having their collected works published.  The book is titled “Twitterature”.   Each of the classic tomes included is “tweeted” in 20 “tweets” or less.  I’ve seen this before on the web  (see Book-In-A-Minute at this website) but not on twitter.

And it’s another example of using video on a website that is not YouTube.  I do like variety.   Thank you Reuters for sharing and for not embedding the commercial at the front like on your website.

Earlier there was a fabulous spoof of the Romance Genre - Regency in two minutes.  This was cause of great amounts of personal hooting and nearly caused me to pass a chicken wing through my nose.  I laughed so hard I literally cried right there in the Buffalo Wild Wings where I had my lunch.

Thank you Smart Bitches for bringing that to my attention and providing this awesome link (below).

The following link takes you to the FanFiction.Net site and straight into a spoof of a Regency Romance.  This is truly a fine bit of parody.  It manages to make fun of the genre in a smart way, and it’s absolutely accurate.

Author's Facebook page for the book PPZ

Yesterday Deb Werksman came and spoke to our local RWA Chapter here in Kansas City.  Here’s the lowdown on what she does and does not want at Sourcebooks in no particular order.  As always check their website for current wants and the four “does want” items are clearly listed in almost every blog and guest blog she’s done.

• No first person POV “it doesn’t work in contemporaries”
• No series where the same protagonists (hero/heroine) pairs are repeated in the next books.  Connected books, with different characters are fine.
• No suspense with romantic elements (But she DOES want romantic suspense, contemporary, historical, regency, Jane Austin related of course, - see their website for other specific genres)
• She wants a hook - something to help her sell the book to the higher ups and know how to sell it to book buyers.  Doesn’t have to be a single sentence, maybe a maximum of three or four that gives her a an idea of how she can sell it.  She gave two examples, one was about a werewolf story where only the men were werewolves and as the full moon got closer they became crankier. (They had “that time of the month”)  The other one (another werewolf story) the woman had studied wolf behavior and Deb felt as though she was learning something about wolves as she read the book.  Think smart stories.
• A hero the reader can fall in love with
• A smart heroine the reader can root for.
• There’s one other thing in this short list but I forget what it is at the moment.  I think it’s evidence that the author has a career arc.

She says it’s hard for her to sell a single book to the marketing and higher ups.  It takes about four books to establish a readership for a new author and you’ll need to be ready to produce those next books.  Expect her to ask what your next book is about. She’ll be quick to tell you if you’re missing your hook for a series and tell you what it is.

If you’re an author with a track record different rules apply.

She had tips for submissions as well.  They are on her website under submissions.  It appears very few people actually read the submission guidelines.  If you do then you’re ahead of the game.  Last week she actually got five submissions that followed the instructions, and thought that maybe all the yelling she’s been doing about that is finally getting through to people.  All I have to say about that is - People, what are you thinking? Read and use the submission guidelines.

Contacts for all the editors are on the page for agents and Deb does take unagented submissions for romance. She didn’t say much about what the other editors were acquiring though she did mention there was an editor taking YA submissions.

She prefers e-mail queries with synopsis and full manuscript.  She reads all these on her Kindle so it’s important that you put your name and contact information in the header on all materials (that way it’s on every page) that way she can call you if she has something she must talk to you about when it comes up.  Otherwise you risk going to the back of the queue.  She says if all the files you send her start with the title of the book they’ll sort nicely together.  I think this is all accurate, but as always check their submission guidelines before querying.

So, I went to pitch Lone Survivor even though I know I shouldn’t pitch an unfinished manuscript, but everyone keeps saying get the pitching experience under your belt, she was there so what the heck.

I was absolutely petrified since this was my first pitch, and I practiced and practiced. The fear was completely irrational since I knew going in (after her presentation) that she wouldn’t want LS.  It’s first person (ding) It’s potentially a series with the same protagonists (ding), it’s not a romance per se (ding).  Talk about stage fright. In spite of the fact I knew going in she wouldn’t want it, I couldn’t sit still for about 20 minutes afterwards still buzzing on adrenaline.

I did have a take away, which was that I should be pitching my story as a mystery which is very helpful.  She said my hook is definitely a mystery hook. I gave her the hook and she sort of looked at me.  I said, “yeah, it’s dark.”  She agreed, then went on to say that dark does really well in the mystery category.  For the record I had searched Amazon for Sourcebooks titles before  the meeting and didn’t really see anything dark in their list of titles, It looked like they had a couple of mysteries by well established authors.  It didn’t appear that they had anything terribly dark. That was only what I found though, so do your own research.

They don’t currently have any inspirational or Kimani equivalent stories they were publishing.  She didn’t rule them out as an eventual area of interest, but the story would have to be really special and be something they could figure out how to sell.

I had been at kind of loose ends as to where to categorize it and that really does help me, so for me it was a useful exercise.  I’m afraid my five minutes was a waste of time for Deb, but I know she did ask for at least one manuscript from one of our fabulous regency writers, and we fed her well, so the trip wasn’t a total loss for her.

Deb is very approachable, nice, personable.

She had some done some interesting research about how sourcebooks’ authors debut sales stack up against other publishers, which sounded like they did quite a bit better than other publishers and gave credit to the marketing they do up front if my memory serves me right.

We had a good day and boy was I ever glad to get that pitch out of the way. Last night Meg and I sat around her new pond (see tomorrow’s blog for that update with fabulous pics) cleaning out the fridge and the cooler of all beer, and watching the stars, listening to the frogs, speculating on our old age, and thinking about Michfest next year.

It was a glorious evening in Kansas.

Had a fabulous time at Nationals.  First off we went to the FBI Academy on the KOD tour and shot guns.  Big ones, little ones, old ones, new ones.  Ones that fired one at a time and well several one right after another.  Okay they all operated in semi-automatic fashion.  I felt a little Suessian just then.

I didn’t take too many photos but here’s some of the ones that made it into my camera.  Others on the new phone I haven’t figured out how to extract yet.

There were hot spy chicks on the shooting range as illustrated here…

She was definitely all romantic suspense on the range in those heels.

Then there was a stop at the training neighborhood.

A nice location but the neighbors?

And a day at the State Department

The room is modeled after the UN they told us (at least I think that's what they said)

Everyone’s hair was lovely from the back

The KOD AGM really happened…

And now I need to write the minutes for that meeting I suppose.

Finally, Nora Roberts.  Attended her chat session.  Insightful.  Guess what, she’s a regular writer (except for that whole “nearly every book is a best seller” thing she’s got going on).  Just a little impatient after all this time with the same old questions I think.  Cool lady.

Nora Roberts- Sorry if the pic isn't fabulous. Used my cheap camera.

At the Death By Chocolate Party Cheryl won a crystal skull…

Cheryl and Deb With Cheryl's prized skull

Then there was the wonderful evenings spent with good friends.  Not all of them are in this pic which I swiped off of Lynn Cash’s web site from Jackie Bannon’s Camera.

Gretchen, Aimee, Jackie, and Heather

It was fabulous overall.  Can’t wait for next year in Tennessee.

I’m at RWA National conference in Washington, D.C. this week. Have had a woderful time and done all kinds of interesting things. In fact I’m listening to Nora Roberts as I write this. Saw Janet Evanovich and Linda Howard this morning. They spoke at the opening session and the keynote respectively.

I’m writing this on my new phone, so I’ll keep it short. Check out my fabulous friend Lynn Cash’s blog where you’ll see some photos and hear some of the stories I’ve told her from this week.

http;//authorlynncash.blogspot.com

I am known as a gadget girl I’ll give you that one.  But as much as an early adopter as I like to think myself, I have been sort of a curmudgeon about this whole social networking thing.  I did the thing.  You know the one, where you say I’ll never go on facebook.  I’m just not interested.  Well, then someone guilted me into it and now I’ve reconnected with a mass of people I thought I’d left behind.  Not intentionally you understand but left behind regardless.

So I finally got curious about this twitter thing.  It was different enough that I think if I hadn’t already acquiesced to facebook I might have missed the boat altogether.  I’m still not exactly sure how to use it but then I’m not at all sure that very many people do.  So I decided to dip my toe in the water.  To find out exactly what all the fuss is about. 

First of all I have to say it is a very egotistical thing to think that anyone is really that interested in whatever 140 character glop of insight I think I have to share.  (Ok, I admit the blog is pretty much the same thing.  You got me there.)

But it does seem to make a pretty good promotional medium.  Assuming of course you can find the people to follow that say interesting things, or convince people who you think may be interested in what you have to say, to follow you.  It’s a bit of a mind bender as well as a tongue twister.

So I signed up for an account.  Yes, one more in a string of accounts.  Last time I checked I had about 75,000 of them out there.  Sorry, that’s a rant for a different day.  So I signed up and began looking around for things that interested me. The trick for me was to do a search on terms that I was interested in.  Writing and writers, crime etc.  So now I follow Harlan Coban and the Boston PD.  Sweet.  

These important bits of information came across today:

VEHICLE v BUILDING: Andrew Square - A car has crashed into Dunkin Donuts, avoid the area. (from the Boston PD)  Ironic no?  The cops HAD to go to the donut shop.  I’m just saying…looks a little bit like a set up to me.

elmoreleonard Live at Border’s B’ham. Peter Leonard to Elmore: Any advice to budding writers? Elmore: Write.

and one after my own heart:

SmartBitchesHave wireless internet, yet am tempted away from 300+ messages by issue of Corn and Soybean Digest magazine. Edamame popularity = good.

Oh, those are the snarky bits I love to roll around on my tongue.

I have to admit I did secretly preen just a little bit when thirty minutes into my twitter account I was being followed.  And not by creepy old guys but by publishers and agents.  So what if I “followed” them first and they retaliated in the unlikely event that I would prove to be clever and witty on the tweet.  Still I felt a kinship to Sally Field at that moment.  

The thing I have enjoyed the most about twitter is the huge amount of interesting blogs I’ve come across because of tweets publicizing their existence.  Sites I would likely have missed without it.  Here are a few of my favorites:

http://nathanbransford.blogspot.com/ He has a pretty large following and an entertaining community.  Reading through the comments on his blog the other day made me wonder how much traffic twitter has generated for him.

Another one I found by following Allison Brennan is Murderati where she and some other authors blog.  http://www.murderati.com/  

http://bitchmagazine.org/post/you-read-harlequin-me-too

I can’t remember who I followed for this one but I’ve seen some interesting posts on Jane Friedman’s blog at Writers Digest http://blog.writersdigest.com/norules/  I subscribe to Writers Digest and never saw it.

And some people are just twits with wit.  DanKennedy_NYC for example.  He tweets funny things.

Lee Loflan and Daniel S. Baum are a few others that I latched onto early and have followed with interest.    So follow me on twitter?  You can if you want.  Gretchenjones is my code name.  But you’ll get more out of finding out who I follow than by following me alone.

In 1986 or so I bought my first pc.  A 386sx I believe from Northgate, on the monthly plan.  Northgate has long since gone the way of the albatross, and the 386 it sold me for that matter. 

Back in the early days of home computing we dialed up the internet determined to exchange bits and bytes with other stalwart interweb users.  We waited for hours and hours to download things like e-mail and bulletin board messages, at blazing speeds of 1200… 2400… wait for it…4800 baud.  I’m not sure I remember what a baud is anymore, my bachelors degree is in IT so that tells you how irrelevant they are now (or how bad my memory is, or how little I care).   I’ll add ‘baud’ to the above list of the expired and fading.

So today (my fifth day observing Twitter) I came across a post from Daniel S. Baum.  He pretty regularly amuses me with his tweets.  This one in particular caught my eye.  I approximate how to retweet it properly here. 

RT @danielsbaum The techno-fix to internet distraction to which I was directed is http://macfreedom.com/
I imagine there’s a PC solution as well

 

 
That took me to a website that touted:

Freedom is an application that disables networking on an Apple computer for up to eight hours at a time. Freedom will free you from the distractions of the internet, allowing you time to code, write, or create. At the end of your selected offline period, Freedom re-enables your network, restoring everything as normal.

This just about sent me into an apoplexy. 

Enter (CUE SOUND TRACK - CHOIR OF ANGELS VOICES) macfreedom.com who will disconnect you and force you to get some work done. 

Er…maybe.

Shoot, this ability to make you disconnect from the network is half the reason I quit PC’s and bought a Mac. 

TO OVERCOME INTERNET CONNECTIVITY ISSUES!

Just in case you’re wondering, I don’t live in a cave. I am aware of the chatter of my writer friends and acquaintences who bemoan their inability to keep the tempting distraction of the internet at bay. They mysteriously lack the ability to keep their mouse-burdened appendages away from their desktop browser’s start button.  More power to them if they avail themselves of this tool.   I too suffer from a browser addiction.  However, I think it unlikely I will ever give in to the extremely minor temptation to pay someone to enforce my parole to the state of incommunicado. 

Hmmm… macfreedom doesn’t disable solitaire now does it?