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Holiday debuggery

We know there were a few kinks with the holiday promotion. We've been working very hard to get them ironed out. If you have a paid/permanent account, keep on sending those holiday coupons. Here's a full update:

• If you were unable to send out multiple coupons at a time, please perform a hard refresh, and you should be good to go.
• If you redeemed a coupon to upgrade your account and the balance at checkout was $0 instead of $9.95 or $15, this means your upgrade did not go through (nor were you charged). We've straightened this out, so you can now apply your holiday coupon toward the purchase of an annual paid account.
• If you tried to redeem a holiday coupon and had trouble using a gift certificate to cover the balance of an annual paid account, we identified the root problem. If this happened to you, you can now use your holiday coupon together with your gift certificate.
• If the number of holiday coupons you have available suddenly goes up (instead of down), this might be due to recipients declining the coupons, at which point your pool of available coupons will be replenished and, therefore, increase.
• If you need assistance with holiday coupons or pretty much anything else (well, LiveJournal related), please open a support request and we'll be more than happy to help!

Tweaks

• There were some initial glitches displaying results on My Guests, but we've worked them out. We hope you'll check out who's been checking you out!
• Some of you reported formatting issues using the Rich Text Editor (i.e., line breaks were being removed incorrectly). We've implemented a fix! Thanks so much for your patience.

Give a little extra!

We're pleased to report that we've already sold over 100 virtual red ribbons in honor of National AIDS Awareness month. Remember, for each charitable vgift you purchase for $2.99, we'll donate 100 percent of gross proceeds to IAVI.org (the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative) to fund the development of an HIV vaccine. Once again, we thank you for your generosity.

Celebrate with holiday vGifts!

Stop by the Virtual Gift Shop and share some holiday magic with your LiveJournal friends.

Photos of the week

We're back with more dazzling pictures from around the world. Congrats to marlenemcc, who has been awarded a virtual blue ribbon as the winner of our fourth photo contest. We hope you'll click over to LJ_Photophile poll and tell us your picks in pics!

For more fantastic user content, we'll meet you under the cut. ( Read more... )

Curtains

Thanks, again, for reading. Here's wishing you the very merriest of holidays. We'll see you next year!

bearmountain

Originally published at Bear Mountain Books. Please leave any comments there.

The kitties received their Christmas presents a little bit early. For them, they get not only the contents of the box, but the boxes too! Ever since the presents arrived, they have been chasing each other round and round the boxes–until one gets inside, digs a bit and then pounces on the other. Unless of course ‘the other’ jumps into the box as well.

Who could have guessed that two cats would be sooo happy with a box of leaves???

I get the leaves from various neighbors — mulch for the garden. The cats, well, so far as they know, someone very kindly put two great toys in the back yard. Junior is hilarious. He has always been a digger. He digs in the box, under the box; he jumps at the string on the one box and just goes crazy. Scamp is pretty mature about the whole thing until she is inside the box. Then it’s dig/spy, spy/dig…throw leaves in the air and bite at them!

The weather is supposed to be nice for the next three or four days. I wonder how long it will take before the kitties knock the tall box of leaves over and roll around in the ensuing mess???

bearmountain

Originally published at Bear Mountain Books. Please leave any comments there.

bellbridgebooks

(The punch line is in turquoise.)

Rejection is a part of publishing.  It sucks.  But the bottom-line is that publishing is a business and not an “everybody plays” soccer league.  Books that aren’t right for our house might be right for a different publisher.  Authors that haven’t quite reached their peak and found their voice can go on to become fabulous writers with the next book or with a revision of the current book.

Do not despair if we don’t request the full manuscript or if we don’t make an offer.

We don’t have the copious amounts of time needed to give writers much feedback unless we’re seriously considering the book or want to see something else from the writer, but if we make the time and give you a little something to think about, a little something to help you shape future queries, or a gentle truth, then don’t respond like the writer below.  I present his reaction to being rejected verbatim--errors, warts and in all its glory.  I received the query in my morning’s email.

BTW, the writer opened the door on “formulaic” by assuring us in the query that the book was far grander and better than the formulaic genre crap being published.  Okay, the query didn’t use the word “crap,” but it was implied.  And won’t the writer be embarrassed to realize that my particular office is not in Georgia?

(If you aren’t howling hysterically with laughter and/or horrified by the following, please don’t query us.  It won’t end well for any of us if you do.)

Thank you for responding to my query.

I just wanted to offer a great book to your company that has never published anything on this level... your attempt to criticize and discourage me has fallen short because its apparent you don't understand what a formulaic novel is, its the way the story it is presented and resolved not just the idea. My writing is very unique and I strongly suspect your lying when you say you see this type of story all the time. This comes as no surprise because most people from the south are misinformed and habitual liars. Georgia is one of the worst states in the country for a large populace of misinformed people who are comfortable telling lies and usually the most wicked hypocrites. In the future try to stick to the truth, writers put in so many hours trying to finish a book and to have false criticism hurled at them is disturbing to me....good day

theljstaff
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Get to know My Guests. Want to know who's checking you out? You can now view the 100 most recent, logged-in users who visited your journal during the past 30-day period with My Guests. For those who prefer to fly under the radar, you can update your My Guests privacy setting here.

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Get ready to check your vital statistics!. To begin, mouse over Journal in the upper nav bar and select My Stats from the dropdown menu (Horizon) or select My Stats under Journal in the side bar (Vertigo). If you're using another design scheme, you can visit My Stats directly. You'll find My Guests on the My Stats tool bar.

Happy holiday promotion!

Tweaks and Enhancements

1. The search is on: We've replaced our default search tool with one from Yandex, a leader in search engine technology. This means you'll get smarter, more granular results! To get started, enter your search terms and click the Go button to the left of the Find box on the upper right of the LiveJournal header. This will take you to the search landing page where you can further refine by Entries, Comments, People & communities, and FAQs. You can also access the search page directly.
2. Whitelisting: We've released a new option to help you moderate your busy communities more efficiently. If an entry contains a link to a whitelisted (i.e., trusted) site, it will be posted automatically without need for moderator approval. If a post contains a link that is not on the whitelist, you'll be prompted to approve. To access this option, please visit settings for any community you maintain and select the third option in the Community Moderation box (located in the lower left-hand corner). Click the enable link to custom-edit your community's whitelist, which has been prepopulated with trusted domains. You can manually add or delete URLs in the text box. Please note: If you're the maintainer of an unmoderated community, you may see the radio button for this setting checked, even though it's not active. This is a known issue. Please select whichever option you prefer and click Save Changes at the bottom of the page. If you're happy with your current settings, then no need to do anything!
3. TMI, dude: We've added some fun FREE sponsored vgifts! You can send up to 50 TMI vgifts to mutual friends (btw, you cannot send free vgifts to communities). If you're a Paid/Permanent user and you want to view sponsored gifts, click Show sponsored gifts on your homepage or visit the sponsored gift page. These vgifts will only be available through Wednesday, December 23rd.

You can view more awesome user content after the jump!

Curtains

Thanks, again, for joining us. Until next time, stay snug!

bearmountain

Originally published at Bear Mountain Books. Please leave any comments there.

For some reason, when participating in cozy mystery groups, I find that high cholesterol comes up a lot…hmm. Anyway, the topic has inspired me to write about how to eat more oatmeal or other whole grains–which should lower your cholesterol. I’ve found that it seems to work, but it can be boring to eat oatmeal for breakfast every day. Most of the oatmeal tricks I use involve grinding whole oats with a food processor. The oats are then almost as fine as flour.

1. Add ground oatmeal to things like meatloaf or meatballs in place of breadcrumbs. The meatballs will actually have a smoother texture and no change at all in taste!

2. Add ground oatmeal to stuffing. We’re having roast chicken tonight. I put in 3/4 cup ground oatmeal in place of some of the breadcrumbs. I did this for Thanksgiving as well. No one could tell the difference.

3. Mix oatmeal into any hot cereal. We eat Ralston’s, which is a whole grain cereal, but it’s hard to find. You can mix either ground oats or regular oats into cream of wheat or cream of rice. Note that the two “Cream of” cereals are not completely whole grain so your cholesterol can sneak by them.

4. Either buy oat flour or make your own and use in desserts. This doesn’t work all that well in every dessert. I tried my own ground oats in peanut butter cookies. Uh, no. I’ll have to hope the peanuts count as whole grain. However, the ground oats and regular oats work extremely well in chocolate chip cookies! They also work in oatmeal cookies, peanut butter bars and monster cookies.

5. Many of the ladies in the Cholesterol club make muffins with either oat flour or oats. I’m not much of a muffin eater, but I do put some ground oats in my pancake mix (about 1/4 cup in place of the pancake flour.)

Other whole grains:

I buy a lot of nuts and seeds: One favorite is unsalted, raw sunflower seeds, which I then roast on the stovetop. The roasting brings out the full flavor. Without salt, these little seeds are a great whole-grain, lower-your-cholesterol snack. They go great as a salad topping.

Walgreens has a number of unsalted nuts at reasonable prices. My favorites are the unsalted cashews–YUM. Their unsalted almonds are wonderful too. Most people eat almonds without salt so you won’t even notice the difference.

Pumpkin seeds–unsalted, again! You can find these in the grocery store or make your own. Either way, if they come raw–I advise roasting them lightly on the stovetop. Works well and brings out the full flavor.

If you want to eat your peanuts unsalted, I think the best kind are “Spanish” peanuts–the ones with the skins on. More flavor and you won’t notice that salt is missing.

Why no salt? Because with high cholesterol, there’s usually this little thing called high blood pressure…

And last but not least–dark chocolate!!! I highly recommend a good Scharffen Berger or Guittard Cocoa (any unsweetened cocoa will do). Mix one tablespoon cocoa to three or four tablespoons sugar. Mix using hot water so that everything dissolves. Top with 1/4 cup of warm milk or…if you cannot resist, a tablespoon or two of half and half! Cocoa is good for you. The sugar and cream…not so much, but we gotta have our treats!!!

bearmountain

Originally published at Bear Mountain Books. Please leave any comments there.

Goin’ international

My first international review: Mysteries in Paradise

Woot!

So I’m debating whether to do a top 2009 list. I think I read less books this year than in any year of my life save ages zero through 3. I think my mom read me more books at bedtime in the years of 3 to 6 than I read this year. What say you? Do you have a list? Need to see just what managed to grab and hold my attention during a year that saw a lot of non-fiction reading (prep for the Europe trip)? Have a good list to link to?