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Outside Temperature: 29°F
Outside Relative Humidity: 85%

Sunrise: 7:05 AM EST

September 4, 2022 - Falmouth, MA
In this issue:
Your Call is Important to us
Writing Resources
Cold weather safety - indoors
Elizabeth George
PHR Books
PHR Work In-Progress
Free Books!
Salute

"Your call is important to us ..."

All these automatic telephone systems are just great. Although I am not sure for whom. If you happen to have the dubious pleasure to need to call for assistance and you're using an iPhone, you should know that iPhones are set to time out of a call after 4 hours and one minute.

I've been on hold a lot recently and after listening to the same saxophone riff for four hours, my phone efficiently cut off the call. I thought it was the pleasant people on the other end who just hung it up, so I redialed, jumped through the opening hoops again, and hung on for another four hours when the call abruptly cut itself off again. Apparently, Apple built that feature in for butt dialed, unintentional calls. They probably never thought that anyone would stay on hold for that long.

I'm thinking of making a playlist of on-hold music interrupted by the occasional public service message! But if you have to make a call, I hope you get the best, real, most helpful customer service person in the world. Happy holidays.

Paul@paulhraymer.com

Stay well,

Writing Resources

There are an enormous number of books about writing and editing and story crafting. These are a few of the ones on my shelf;

Stephen King - On Writing
Elizabeth George - Write Away
Grant Richards - How to Write a Novel (1901)
Natalie Goldberg - Writing Down the Bones

Then there are some great references:

James Charlton - The Writer's Quotation Book
Laurel Yorke - Beyond the First Draft
William Strunk & E.B. White - The Elements of Style
Roget's Thesaurus
Garner's Modern English Usage
Becca Puglisi & Angela Ackerman - The Emotion Thesaurus
J.I. Rodale - The Synonym Finder
Linda N. Edelstein - The Writer's Guide to Character Traits
Fay Faron - Rip Off - A Writer's Guide to Crimes of Deception
Joe Navarro - What Every Body is Saying
Lee Lofland - Police Procedure & Investigation

A little light after the holiday reading!

Cold weather safety - indoors

Just a couple of highlights here:

Anything that burns will produce some level of carbon monoxide. Anything that burns be it candles, fireplaces, gas ranges. Generally the levels are very low.
If your CO detector goes off, don't try to defeat it. It's not at all like a smoke detector. You can't wave a towel at it and hope that it will stop being annoying. And don't take the batteries out.
If you lose power, don't bring your generator into the garage and run it - even with the garage door open. I know it's cold and miserable outside, but you want to live through the weather event.
Don't idle your car in the garage to warm it up - even with a remote start. Cars produce CO too.
Make sure your furnace, boiler, and water heater are drafting properly. The exhaust gases have to go up the chimney and out of the house.

Bookshop.org supports local bookshops and writers. They have raised over $24 million for bookshops! Click the link below to visit the books I have reviewed in this newsletter. Thank you.

Click for books and bookshops mentioned here

Writers Worth Reading
Elizabeth George

Elizabeth George is a professional writer the way Beethoven is a professional composer or Stan Getz is a professional sax player. There is just something in the way she handles words. She writes mystery stories about Inspector Lynley. Her latest is Something to Hide.

Salute

I want to salute the truck and bus drivers who have to drive through nasty weather to get people and packages to their destinations. I also want to salute the pilots who have to fly people home to their families and their own families who worry about them flying through stormy skies. I also want to recognize people who work in restaurants on holidays and those front line, customer service people who have to face grouchy, last minute shoppers with a smile. Happy holidays to all and thanks for being there. As Robert Palmer said, "It takes every kinda people to make the world go 'round."

PHR Books
Residential Ventilation Handbook V2
Recalculating Truth
Death at the Edge of the Diamond
Second Law
Also available on-line and in fine bookshops.

PHR Work In-Progress
It's amazing to me how characters can take over a tale and twist it around to make it go where they want it to. And if you dare to try to change their minds, it all falls apart!

Fill Up Your eReader for Free!
If you just got a new eReader, Bookfunnel provides a means for a group of authors to get together to give away electronic copies of their books in return for adding subscribers to their mailing lists. There are some great undiscovered authors in these books. Chick this button and check them out.

Free books!

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Salty Air Publishing Newsletter is a free, bi-weekly newsletter from Paul H. Raymer that launched in 2020. More than 1,900 subscribers receive it. Knowing that you are giving me your time to read these words, it is my goal to be as interesting and helpful as possible.

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