Introducing Another Alter Ego: Stephanie Ryan

Many of you know that I love to read anything and everything I can get my hands on. That includes the Young Adult categories, sweet romances, sensual romances, erotica, erotic romances, horror, paranormal, fantasy...you get the picture.  Because of those tastes, I have several manuscripts that can fit into all of those different genres. I didn't think it was a good idea to write with one pen name for all of it. I just don't want to have to deal with an angry parent of a 13 year old who got a hold of my explicit erotic romances.  Enter the different pen names.

As Tammy Dennings Maggy I write poetry, erotica and erotic romance. As Lia Michaels I get to tackle a bit more on the wild and taboo side with menage, GLBT erotic romances and heavier BDSM stories. Today, I finally launched the blog and social media for Stephanie Ryan. Through her I get to share my YA stories, mainstream fiction, sweet and sensual romances and any other open age category NOT considered erotica and erotic romance. Whew!

If you're confused by all of this, don't be. Even though at times it is more work for me to maintain, it's the best way for me to keep all of my projects separate and be able to explore all the different genres that appeal to me. Another bonus is that I have another all aged blog to be able to host fellow authors. It's a win win as far as I'm concerned.

If you have a few moments, could you stop in to Stephanie's blog and be one of the first people to follow her? If you're an author looking for a spot to do a guest appearance in February or March, check out her guidelines and see if it's something you'd like to do. And please, feel free to share her link or any of my links with authors looking for ways to showcase their work. If they like what they see, we can set up some dates!

Thank you all for following me here, Behind Closed Doors, at Sassy Vixen Publishing and at Four Seduced Muses. Thank you for following Lia at The House of Taboo and now Stephanie at Through Stephanie's Eyes. Without you all "we" wouldn't be here today!

Big Tackle Hugs and Kisses!

Tammy

#WWoW: How to Get Even With The Mean Girls (and Boys)

Now that I have your attention...hehehe

Welcome back to Not Enough Time in the Day and this week's Writer's Words of Wisdom. It's been a while since I've posted for our group of fabulous writers because of the holidays and some other personal issues. Some of those issues are why I chose this particular topic.  I've written about not forgetting "me" time, about not quitting your day job to become a full time writer without a plan in place, and how to use reviews and other criticisms as a way to improve your craft but not get you down.  I've had to deal with all three of these topics over the last two months for myself and with a few friends, and let me tell you, it's not been easy. Some of it has been downright overwhelming and has led me away from what I really want to do. WRITE.

I've had to defend my choice to write erotic romance more times than I ever thought possible...to other AUTHORS. Sure I expected a bit of ribbing from family and friends for writing "smut," but to have fellow writer's slam me and my friends for our chosen genres was disheartening to put it mildly.  Just yesterday an author who claims to write "classy erotica" decided that she didn't want to do a guest spot on another blog because it was currently featuring a particular author who along with the rest of her "group" write "blatant smut."  When told that she obviously wasn't a good fit for the blog, this self absorbed author kept stating that she had published over 17 books and basically implied that we all should feel special that she "chose" to share her work with us on the blog.

Another author friend is giving up writing short stories all together. Why? First of all, they are not that easy to do. You need to come up with a hook, plot, and conclusion in a limited number of words. So far every short she's written, there has been one person who complains that the story wasn't long enough. In fact, there were a group of these reviewers tearing down many short stories on Amazon and Goodreads simply because the stories were too short. Huh? Isn't the whole point of a short story is that it's short?

On another of my blogs, we've opened it up for guest spots with specific days for guests and four days for those of us who own the blog. Unfortunately, there is usually at least one or two folks who don't read the guidelines and request dates that aren't up for guests, or start making demands for how and when they will agree to be a guest. Agree to be our guest? Hmmmm...I don't recall soliciting specific people to be on the blog. We just opened it up and told people if they were interested give us a shout. Once again we were privy to the "you should be grateful that I want to grace your blog with my presence" rant. Oy!

Two more of my author friends were attacked maliciously by women's church groups. They were accused of  being the cause of everything from the loose morals of this country to the reason there are so many teenage pregnancies. Yes you read that right.  Writing about two consenting adults...okay one or more of them could be vampires...having consensual sex was the cause of the downfall of this country. Writing about sex outside of marriage was a sin and all of the books that glamorized this immoral act needed to be destroyed. Yeah, these very same comments from women lined up around the block for the Fifty Shades books. :)

How do you get through all of this without exploding?

That's where I had trouble. I'm not one to sit back and keep quiet when someone I care about is being treated poorly. I want to lash out and make the offending person or thing hurt as much as they hurt my friend.  Is that the right thing to do? Of course not, but it didn't stop me from thinking up ways to get even...some way. Some how I would get even.  Bwahahahaha!

That's right. I wrote about it. The really angry stuff stayed in my journals, but I did take some of my concerns to my Facebook pages and found I wasn't the only one dealing with this stuff. There were so many more people frustrated with all the mean spirited people out there. Another of my author friends shared a link with me that gave the best advice on how to handle these things.  Click HERE and take a few minutes to see the secret.  Go on. I'll wait for you.

Got it? Read on!

How DO you get even with with the Mean Girls?

Keep writing. That's right. Just like the blog article from The Write Practice laid out for you in black and white. Write until you can't write any more and then write even more. As fellow WWoW member Lacey Wolfe wrote last week, with this day and age of social media it can be quite easy to let the tirades fly. I'm just as guilty of that as anyone...maybe more so. I do have separate accounts for that reason, but with that being said, I am who I am. I am lucky enough that I don't have to hide myself or my views from the people I work with or my employer. The best thing for any of us to do is to turn it all into plot points of our books! 

An author, editor, reviewer or reader just making your life miserable? Make them a character in a new book idea or your current work in progress. That person who was "holier than thou" and said your last cover was just selling pornography because to him it looked like the couple could actually have sex while dressed? Go ahead and  make him the owner of a new restaurant that was panned by food critics on it's opening night. That reader on Goodreads who rated your first book 2 stars simply because it wasn't about man love? Make her the villain in your next book who finally gets caught with her fingers in the till and is carted off by the Feds for insider trading.

See what I mean?  Now have I ever written about people who've done me wrong? You better believe it honey! Will I continue to do so? hehehehe  You'll just have to read my books to see if you can figure out who's who. ;)

Final Words

Go ahead and do the exercise outlined in The Write Practice blog post. Take fifteen minutes and just write about the person who criticized your writing or attacked you personally. Make them get their "just desserts." It's really a freeing experience and just maybe you will have the basis for yet another short story or longer novel. 

Above all else, you are a writer. WRITE! Show the world you are not just that flash in the pan. Take the constructive criticism to heart to make your writing even better. Don't let real life get in the way of that. That's what I had to deal with the last few months. Between my own health issues and that of my husband, I've had very little time to write...check that. I've given myself very little time to write. 

I forgot to give myself permission to have "me" time. I got all caught up in the whirlwind of the holidays, promoting my books, those of my friends and the stress of my evil day job that I put my passion on hold. No more. It's a new year and time to make the one and only resolution that means a damn.

Come on. We can do this. It's a big step and the most important one we can take. Ready? 

Would you like more pearls of wisdom this fine Wednesday? Here are the other fabulous participating authors from WWoW. You can also join us on Facebook. See you there!

Paloma Beck

Lacey Wolfe

Eden Glenn

A Smart & Savvy Group of Authors who write a weekly feature for their blog -Writer's Words of Wisdom- each Wednesday. The goal is to impart what we've learned about writing, editing, getting published, book promotion, and more along the way.

#FurbabyFridays Presents Raccoons: Cute and Cuddly or Typhoid Marys?

Welcome to Not Enough Time in the Day. It's Friday so that means it's time for my weekly segment covering a variety of topics that come up in my day to day workings as a veterinarian. That's right. Not only am I an author, newlywed, publisher and editor for Sassy Vixen Publishing, I'm a doctor of veterinary medicine. I started my career in 1993 in Michigan just one week after graduating from the Michigan State College of Veterinary Medicine and haven't looked back. I had wanted to be a veterinarian since I was 6 years old and here I am forty years later looking at retirement. Life is good!

I decided to add this weekly feature to this blog because I wanted to share the information I've gathered over the years with more than just my personal clients. Each day there are people who come to our clinic without even the basic knowledge of what goes into owning a pet. Usually they end up researching online any symptoms they see in their pets before taking them where they should be in the first place...to a VETERINARIAN! 

Sure, the Internet can be a vast wealth of information. Unfortunately, there's just enough misinformation (if not more) posted than sound factual advice. I could write an entire SERIES of posts on that subject alone, but instead, I'll choose my battles one at a time. This battle was brought to the top of the list today because of one of my clients. Just recently they had to euthanize their beloved dog of 8 years because she was dying of liver failure. It was too advanced and she wasn't responding to therapy. In her case, it appeared she had a mass in her liver, but her blood work raised additional flags. Was it all due to the cancer, or were there other factors here?

You see, this client and his little dog lived next to a vermin infested house owned by a former member of the local city council. No one lived in this house other than these pests, but they not only destroyed and weakened the structural support of parts of the house, their urine and feces literally flowed into my client's yard, contaminating it with parasites and potentially fatal disease organisms that are also contagious to humans. (This is called zoonosis.) These wild animals would also lunge at my client, his wife and their dog if they would try to access their own backyard.  This all began in 2005 and continues to be a problem to this very day. I'll get to that in a moment.

What could possibly cause such damage and potentially affect the health and well-being of my client and his pet? Raccoons. These furballs are definitely not the cute and cuddly tame pets portrayed on some movies and television programs. First of all, these are wild animals. To take them out of their natural habitat to domesticate them is just asking for trouble. 

In this case, the neighbor's property was literally INFESTED with these nasty buggers. They destroyed the attic with their urine and feces, turning it into what is referred to as a raccoon latrine. They even found ways to cross over from this property to that of my client, attempting to attack anyone that came close to their "claimed" territory. When my client complained, the owner of the property ignored him. She even ignored the calls and citations from Animal Vector Control to clean up the property because of the risk to human health. When my client complained to the city council, they sided with the negligent homeowner and refused to send in anyone to do anything. Even letters from me and my office outlining the dangers of these animals to the dog's health and that of my client went ignored.  One of the smart-ass animal control officers even stated that raccoons "were on the endangered list" and there was little he could do about them.  

Really? Endangered? What kind of idiots did this buffoon take us for? If this is what we can expect from people paid to take care of the animal dangers in the local cities, then we are all doomed.  

Okay...I'll get back to the topic now. ;)

At every turn, my client was stopped from complaining. He's gone to the local papers, news stations, more council meetings than he could count, and still he was ignored. Other neighbors are afraid of the negligent former city council member who owns that house and many have moved away. My client can't sell his house with the raccoon and disease infested home next to his.  Last summer, one of the walls of the patio collapsed onto my client's property. The structure was so undermined and filled with urine and feces, the wall couldn't stand any longer. Unfortunately, the crew the property owner hired to "clean up" the mess and rebuild the wall, just dumped all of the raccoon feces into my clients yard. Hundreds of pounds of it. That's right. Hundreds of POUNDS of it.

So what's wrong with that? Can't you just pick up the poop and be done with it?

It's not that easy. Raccoon feces can contain a variety of parasites and disease organisms including but not limited to fleas, ticks, toxoplasmosis, giardia, coccidia, distemper, leptospirosis, and the very deadly round worm called Baylisascaris. Like many intestinal parasites, the eggs of this worm are fairly hardy can can infect humans and other animals through ingestion or inhalation of the infective eggs. The worms can lay thousands of eggs in a very short period of time. It takes 2-3 weeks for these eggs to be infective, so prompt clean up is a must as is keeping residential and play areas free of raccoons. All access points under decks, into attics, gardens and sandboxes need to be monitored and blocked off/covered if at all possible.  If a human is infected with this parasite, the larval stages can migrate throughout the body causing damage through many organs, even the brain. You will find articles all over the web talking about this and just as many naysayers complaining that it's very rare so why worry about it. Yeah, don't worry about it until your child goes blind from the larvae migrating into his/her eyes.  I'd rather err on the side of caution thank you very much!

Not only is the feces of concern, but the urine as well. Leptospirosis is a bacteria that can be spread through urine and feces of infected animals including wildlife and dogs. So far we haven't documented a case of it in cats. For those of you who have traveled to Hawaii may have seen signs near waterfalls and other waterways indicating leptospirosis had been found in the areas and to take precautions. If infected and not treated, people and animals  could end up with kidney failure, liver failure, meningitis and/or respiratory distress. 

The vaccinations we had for dogs had only two of the strains of leptospirosis in it for years. Within the last four years, they've developed a vaccine with 5 strains in it and at this point it's thought to be cross protective against some of the other species in the wild. Each region of the world has different strains, even in just the United States there are a variety of strains. It used to be difficult to test an animal if they had been vaccinated against leptospirosis and know for sure the positive result wasn't due to the vaccine. Now we have much more sensitive and specific tests.

Okay, so raccoons can potentially spread parasites and diseases to pets and humans. Are they really all that dangerous besides that? They really are cute with the way they use their hands to wash their food. 

Yeah, real cute until you're rushing yourself, your child or your animal into an emergency hospital. I said it at the beginning of this post and I'll say it again. RACCOONS ARE WILD ANIMALS!!! They needed to be treated as such and shown respect by staying as far from them as possible. Don't leave food out for the stray cats. Don't leave bird feeders out at night. Lock or close off your pet doors at night so they don't have access to your house to get more food. Secure your trash cans.  Keep your pets vaccinated for rabies, leptospirosis, and distemper. Have routine exams with your veterinarian to include fecal tests and dewormings.

The CDC has a nice article on how to prevent and control the transmission of the Baylisascaris from raccoons. The advice is good for the other parasites and diseases these rodents can carry as well.  Here's a video of a woman and her dog who had a run in with several raccoons this summer while out jogging at night. The most important thing to take away from their experience is to make sure you protect yourself and your pets from these dangers by making sure you give them a wide berth and follow the CDC recommendations for "raccoon-proofing" your home and it's surroundings.