Mike Mahan, of Shelflife Creative, has once again come through with a beautiful and evocative cover design for An Irish Miracle. The novel is in it’s final stages of production, so stay tuned for a release announcement coming soon!
Author: Rob Mahan
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“My Editor” – I Love Saying That
As an engineer, I learned the value of getting “a fresh set of eyes” on anything I was designing. At each stage of the design process (paper napkin, 3D computer model, dimensioned drawings, etc.), it was always a good idea to have someone else look over my work and offer suggestions or catch mistakes, because The Rule of Tens applied. That rule meant that every error that made it another step in the design process before it was caught would be ten times more costly to fix. The last thing I wanted was a call from the fab shop supervisor. By then, the cost to correct an error in my design might include surrendering body parts.
As an author, the same ideas apply to writing a novel. While working on An Irish Miracle, I was very fortunate to have Robin Martin, of Two Songbirds Press, as “my editor”. I really do love saying “my editor” because of the tremendous value Robin’s “fresh set of eyes” and talent as a freelance editor brought to my writing. I was well past the “paper napkin” step, having already written three drafts, before I contacted Robin through the Editorial Freelancers Association website. Based on her detailed Evaluation and Critique, I wrote the fourth draft, which nearly doubled in length while making my plot stronger and my characters rounder. I was also able to correct writing errors that Robin had documented, eliminating instances of filtering, narrative exposition, and shifting points of view that would have jarred my readers out of their vivid and continuous readers’ dreams. After doing a full contextual edit of the fourth draft, Robin even found yet another “fresh set of eyes” for the final proofreading of my corrected and polished manuscript. From experience, she told me she was too familiar with it to proofread it herself.
Because of the collaboration with “my editor,” An Irish Miracle is nearly ready to be sent out, and I’m confident that I won’t be receiving any unwanted telephone calls from the fab shop supervisor!
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Tech Notes – Skip Password Purgatory
Password Purgatory
Webster’s second definition of purgatory is “a place or state of temporary suffering or misery”. It’s where I used to go whenever the password I absolutely knew was correct was heartlessly rejected by the account I absolutely had to access. Not to be denied by some digital gatekeeper, I would resort to some really bad password strategies. You might even recognize one or two of them:
- PW = “password”, “123456”, or “qwerty”.
- Use the exact same password for everything.
- Use birthday or anniversary dates (Heck, I had to remember them anyway.)
- Write all my passwords on tacky notes and frame my monitor with them.
Sorry if I opened the particular bag you keep your cat in, but she probably needed a little air anyway. Now just about every online move I make, from blogging to shopping, from posting to self-publishing, requires a password. And many sites have gotten all we-take-security-seriously and require strong passwords like these:
- AWd*4Qd5!g
- %$x2sC2RQG
- W4A%KJb#78
But I can’t remember one we-take-security-seriously password like that, let alone a few dozen or more. I’d need a computer to remember all those cryptic, meaningless strings.
Wait. Maybe we’re on to something there.
Password Nirvana
Turns out you can have your we-take-security-seriously passwords and remember them, too. The solution is using a password management program. Who knew? I won’t attempt a comprehensive review of all your password management options here. You can find plenty of those with your favorite search engine. But here’s some general information to get you started:
- Many standalone password management programs are inexpensive or free
- Most modern browsers already have built-in password management capabilities
- Password management programs hide your passwords behind a long master password that you enter only once per session
- Password management programs remember more than just passwords
- Addresses / URLs of account login pages
- User names
- Passwords
- Password management programs usually have options for storing your data
- Encrypted or unencrypted
- Locally (on your harddrive)
- Removable media (on a flash drive)
- Remotely (online)
The password management program I settled on a few years ago is RoboForm from Siber Systems. (This may sound like a commercial, but trust me, I’m no paid spokes-model for anyone.) RoboForm nearly revolutionized the way I use the Internet. Once I enter my we-take-security-seriously master password, RoboForm automates the entire login process for any of my online accounts, all with a single click of the mouse:
- Opens the login page in a new tab
- Fills in the user name and cryptic, meaningless password
- Submits credentials to the digital gatekeeper
With a single click, I’m securely logged in and ready to opine, purchase or post.
Bottom Line
Read some password management program reviews and try out some of the free trial versions or even your browser’s built-in password manager capabilities. Once you settle on the password management program of your own choice, it will revolutionize the way you use the Internet and keep you out of password purgatory, all while enhancing your online security.
And take those little yellow notes off your monitor. They really are tacky.
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