I'm finally back or: Why the Geek Squad Sucks

First of all, I'd like to thank all of you who asked after me when

We work best side by side

I sort of...disappeared.  There is a lot to the story, and a good many of you follow my wife: The Fabulous Feathermaye, and know that she has kept up the news of what's been going on during my blog absence.

Many of you were following our exploits through our quazi-homelessness, as we meandered from Greater Houston to Canton Mountain, to Palestine (pronounced: Pal-ess-teen around these here parts) then our movements to Dallas, which has finally brought us back to a position where we sort of started from: with a roof over our heads, and employment in the storage business, leaving us once more working side-by-side...whew! 

The Old Mine on Canton Mountain

As you may recall, I was blogging like a madman from The Mountain.  Then, the stupid power cord on this lap-top developed a little, shall we say: wiggle? I was having to stop, rig a constantly changing jig with which to shore up the plug, just to get a little juice so I could plunge into the web's waters.  This worked briefly, and became so much of a hassle that I could not finish anything without hours upon hours of head-banging effort just to power up.

Finally, I gave up and went back to work --literally-- as our unemployment ran out and we had not yet found this new little opportunity. 

On our way to where we are now, I attempted to get the lap-top serviced and spoke with numerous individuals who nodded in agreement: all I needed was to have a new power-port installed, the bad one had just enough play in the contact points that it simply would not stay put! I even consulted with an area manager for Best Buy, and he agreed that the good ole boys at the Geek Squad could tackle that job, and would probably only run in the pricing neighborhood of around 65.00.  I promised I would not hold him to that price exactly, and even nodded at the "give or take 10-15 bucks".  

As it turned out, his little cluster of Best Buy stores did not include the one in Mesquite, Texas...which was the closest one to the area of East Dallas that Feathermaye and I were renting a room in.  We called ahead and did as much research as possible about the Best Buy/Geek Squad procedures and felt that since the lap-top had to be shipped off for repair anyhow, it didn't matter which store we dropped it off at. 

We paid our 35.00 deposit and sent the unit on its way to repairsville.  

While I was at work a few days later, Feathermaye sent me a text telling me that the Geeks felt that my poor laptop needed a new motherboard to fix the problem and they wanted 367.00 to button'er up.

I know, I know, you're all chuckling and saying: You can buy a new one for that price!  AS important as writing is for me, this was not in our budget.

When Feathermaye attempted to pursue the "can't you just change the power port?" argument, they addressed her as if she were a mentally challenged individual.   A condescending "No ma'am..." was the answer she received from the Geeks.

"Just tell 'em to send it back, then..." I said to her, mentally adding "I'll just have to put off writing for a while longer".

It was Best Buy's third strike

"I figured   you'd say that," she said.  "I already told them that, along with a few expletives I felt you would want me to add in.  I promise I didn't call any of them anything that did not fit the situation."

"That's my girl..."

 Back to the ole drawing board.

Having moved everything in to our newly remodeled residence, I took advantage of a rainy day and finished unpacking our stuff for like the upteenth time in the last two years.  Atop a shelf sat the laptop once I was done, along with the disagreeable power cord.  It called out to me this morning and I had a moment of inspiration.

When the morning duties were done and we reached a period of quiet (one of the real advantages that Feathermaye and I love about this type of work) I grabbed the laptop, power cord and a little aluminum foil.  

I had actually thought about using the foil long ago, but dismissed it because I really thought the Geeks could fix this for a songs worth of pocket change.  I fed my power cord up through the holes in the back of the lower counter top and opened the puter. 

"Honey, breathe..." Feathermaye told me when I was working on it. At last, I had everything positioned and neatly folded a bit of foil, which I then carefully wrapped around the male portion of the cord prong. Remembering to exhale, I gently pushed the shimmed tip into the hole; it was a nice firm fit; I saw the little red "charging" light come on.  It stayed on.

I stared at it, waiting for it to blink off again, as it had so many times over the last year or so. 

"Honey, breathe!" Feathermaye said again, not looking at what I was doing, but noticing none-the-less. 

But, the little red light was staying on!

It's still on!

I've written this entire blog without it going off...

The angels are singing: hallelujah!

And even after we broke for lunch, it stayed on...

Oh wait...It just turned green.  I'm charged! I'm charged!  Great god almighty, I'm charged at last!

As for the Geeks...well, I guess everyone needs a paycheck.  I'm just not contributing to it.

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Monkeys in control...

Finding good customer service today is next to impossible.  There are too many consumers, to begin with.  Everyone makes demands and demands to have their demands met when they demand them.  We want our service quick, efficient and inexpensive.  We want first class service, but we want someone else to pay for it.  In other words, we’ve screwed ourselves.

We shouldn’t be surprised, really.  No one likes working in customer service.  That poor sap that has to sit there and take all our verbal abuse when we ream them out for bad service, or downright thoughtlessness.  Who the hell wants that?

Not me, and most likely, not you. 

In fact, most of us would demand a small fortune to take on a job like that; we just know how badly we might be affected by everyone’s bad attitude and vile disgust—that breaking point when we’ve exhausted all human intelligence and found nothing but appalling stupidity and ‘They-don’t-pay-me-enough-for-this-shit! 

No wonder Internet Holiday sales had a record season.

Why deal with some underpaid, under-appreciated-in-their-own-mind clerk with their finger up their nose when all you need to do is point and click? 

I know, some things require personal touch, you can’t try on clothes on line and all that…

For my grand example, I’ll use the experience of my wife: The Fabulous Feathermaye.   She wanted a new lap top and I said sure.  We usually buy them from our local rent-to-own joint, since they warranty the device and simply replace it if yours takes a dive.  We’ve done business with them several times at several locations around the greater Houston area. 

This time, she ordered just in time—she was told—for Christmas and was eagerly anticipating last Thursday, the appointed day for it to be delivered by the local store here in Pearland. 

Early in the day she called them and asked if she should just swing by and pick it up.   She was told: No, ma’am, we deliver everything; no one picks up anything at our store.

Well, that was new information, but we nodded and said ‘okay…’ and went on about our business.  Six o’clock came and I asked: “Ah, should we give them another call?”

“No,” Feathermaye says. “They often have to deliver late.  Besides, it’s just that it’s Christmas and everyone’s scrambling.”

I nod.  “Right, but that also means things get overlooked.”

“I’m waiting until ten minutes to eight before I call,” she said.  And, that’s just what she did.

 

At the appointed time, she was told that the driver was in route with her computer.  And, “oh yeah, we didn’t get the one you ordered, so we’re giving you this one for the time being…”   

Feathermaye went back and forth with the woman about why, exactly, she wasn’t getting the product she ordered days before and was assured she’d have in hand this very day. 

No one at the store had a good answer for that; a few different excuses were lamely given.  I went to bed at 10:30.  Feathermaye was still fuming at the time. 

At eleven something the driver finally showed up and dumped a laptop, (No box, no anything that comes with it) just the laptop with some wires dangling from his dirty hands.  He had her sign and before she could even look at the damn thing, he took off, claiming (not that I don’t believe him) that he still have other deliveries to make.  Feathermaye thanked the guy for coming so late and showed him out. 

When she went to get on her new computer, it was password protected.  On the screen, it tells one just what password to put in and just how to do so, but when she did it, nothing happened.  So, Feathermaye calls the store and gets the frayed clerk still there when it’s going on midnight.  However, the company she works for had decided they would be closed for the entire holiday weekend, Fri.-Sun. so there would be no one left to talk to after she left the store.  She tells Feathermaye that the driver has the password, if it’s not the one on the screen.  Feathermaye calls the driver and he has no idea what she’s talking about.  Therefore, Feathermaye’s anger and annoyance builds exponentially over the holiday.  At times, I’m so very glad that it was not me that screwed all this up. 

Of course, as soon as she speaks to a young woman at the store this (Monday after) morning the girl tells my wife that she has no right to yell at her, then cuts her off and passes the phone to someone else.  I’m sitting right beside her, mind you, I’d know at once if she had yelled, hollered or anything else to anybody.  I got news for the kid that was on that phone; you ain’t ever heard anybody yell…yet.

Crying, so frustrated she was ready to start pulling out her hair, I made Feathermaye calm down and leave while I called the idiots and told them to just come get their crap and take it someplace else.  Then, we called the original store we worked with six years ago.  As I type this, Feathermaye is on her way back with her new laptop.   She made two calls there, and they had all waiting when she showed.  In and out in minutes! To say it was perfect customer service would be putting it mildly.  Why one ‘can’ when another ‘can’t’ is just crazy as hell.  

Like anything else, when you get right down to it, this all could have been worse.   But, Feathermaye’s now happy, even if she had to get her blood pressure jacked up by all the unnecessary miss-management of the morning.  The sound of her little fingers tapping on those little keys are like heaven for yours truly. 

Happy New Year, everyone!

S

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The Early Returns...

So far, the reports are good.  Those who’ve already gotten a copy are reading, enjoying, commenting.  I hope everyone feels free to do that.  Besides, I appreciate the feedback.

Mostly, I just enjoy seeing someone read something with my name on it.  Go figure…

More to come,

S

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Posters, reviews & promotion…

Moving right along, we’ve gotten a couple of versions of the promo posters that are going out to bookstores here in the area.  One version has a color sat image with hurricane Rita bearing down on Texas, while the other is in black and white. 

Also, the fantastic London Fashionista Vicki Day reviewed "Tormenta" on her blog , which receives over 9k hits a day.  Of course she is raving about it.  Vicki sat in while I was composing the story on my site, and followed along on the daily, sometimes twice a day entrees as this dark tale poured out of yours truly.  Here’s hoping that all of her considerable contacts across the pond can sway buyers over this way (Hello, New York?)

I’ve no clue what the publisher is planning for promotion; I’ve not met with or spoken to my BA about all that.  However, we’re moving right along with our own brand of spreading the word.  The big task at hand now is getting word around the regional area and I’m pretty sure that’s where most of the work will begin.  No one is talking about NOT going national, or international, should things swell to such ranks.  However, the goal was to achieve 50k readers (people who bought and read a copy) in the greater areas of Houston/Galveston, Dallas/Fort Worth, Austin/Waco and San Antonio.  With demographics of around 20 million in those areas alone, and with a story based and set in Texas, the rest ‘should’ be quite natural—so long as people know it’s out there…

Of course, all my old gang out in the Carolinas, Georgia and Florida are ordering like mad and I’ll be pretty busy the next few days signing copies to send back out to all of you—thanks for those orders, by the way.  I’ll have to set up a signing out there, probably in February, but it’s still too early to set up dates yet.  There’s no telling what this little story will do, but I’m hoping for the best anyhow.

More to come…

S

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Start the presses...

Happenstance and good luck put my first of two days off the day job with my final proofs.  I held my breath and opened the file, read a few breathless lines and smiled as I exhaled.  Finally, I see what my work looks like after a good editor has finished with it.  The feeling of seeing your words and thoughts come together in tight format is like nothing else, for me. 

Some folks like to jump off of bridges while shackled to rubber bands or strapped to parachutes.  I send in work that I hope will come back looking like this…

Sure, we had a few (eleven) small corrections to make as we dusted off the finished product.  But that is exactly what we now have: Tormenta, as a work of American Fiction is headed for print production.

It won’t be long now, gang…

S

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Final stages of Tormenta: The Cover Art

Tormenta's wrapper, just click to view larger image

Last night we got this nice surprise in our Book email.  For all of you who’ve wondered how this whole process works, here is one more step in the evolution.  I’m tickled that so many of you have been able to follow along from rough draft to this point. 

We are very pleased with the work the Publisher has done so far, very professional in all respects.  They are getting review copies out to those sources that have requested them, newspapers, book clubs, etc. 

As you can see, the cover art is pretty slick.  I really like the font used on the back copy ‘blurb’ that describes the story within.  Hopefully, that blurb is enough for the casual shopper to pick up, look at and make a decision to hold on to it all the way to the check out aisle.

We opted out of a picture of yours truly on the back, although we are going to update the web/blog/site with a B&W head shot that helps suit the darker mood of this work.  But, I like those corpses! 

Anyhow, let me know what you all think of the cover, even though none of us can do a damn thing about it now…

More to come!

S

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Old Blue

My brother Johnny just finished up a grueling five months of intensive training to get certified as a Haz-Mat diver.  At forty-six, he is the oldest human being on the planet to ever do this physically demanding, and highly dangerous training.  I’m not sure age matters much to him, actually; he also has a one-year-old son (the youngest of three).  That means that I’ll be seventy when the kid graduates high school.

All the physicality of the training has my bro down to a mean, lean fighting weight.  The instructors at the Jacksonville training facility (these guys are twenty year Navy Seals) are old salts, but even they had to acknowledge the remarkable accomplishment of a battered old man coming through their system and proving that he can hang with nineteen-year-olds.  They call him, “Old Blue”, for some damn reason. 

We spoke last night, late.  For Johnny, Stephanie and the boys, it’s been a long, hard five months.  Our mother passed away as all this was going on and the strain of pressure and distance worked their little family over pretty hard.  I know I spent some time listening to vented anger and frustration over the situation, but to no one’s surprise, Johnny called me last night from his little pop-up camper (where he has bivouacked for five months) and I heard Steph in the background.  They both sounded happy, finally, that it was over and that Johnny can now move on to the work he plans to step into.   He also noted that they are both looking forward to simply having him back in his own bed for a little bit, at least long enough to rest up before he gets called out to a deep water rig, a water tower that needs inspection, a bridge with questionable support footing or a municipal water supply someplace that’s long overdue for maintenance.  Haz-Mat divers are the only ones who can take care of that sort of thing.  There are not many of them.

Despite the rough patch that the family has had to go over, I’m very proud of the man.  He went out there with men that he could have fathered and showed them all that he was still a force to be reckoned with.  When we spoke he kept going on about how he had been following our progress here with the book.  He’s not much of a facebook guy and most computer functions leave him scratching his big head.  But he was able to get his mobile phone to open the pages so he could at least see the progress we made, as he fought through pain, frustration and his own personal demons. 

“It made a big difference, Scott, just knowing somebody else was struggling too.  I just wanted to know I wasn’t just hanging out here all by myself.  Hell, you showing me how you were going to push that book made me get off my old ass and do this in the first place.”  He sounded tired as he said it.  Tired but it was a happy weariness; just knowing that he had accomplished something that most middle-aged men would have considered impossible.  But that’s my kid brother.

“I’m just another roughneck now,” he said chuckling, but the sound of it, the tone of his voice, told me he was absolutely serious. 

He said that, I suppose, because he knows I enjoy writing about those sorts of people:  the hard-working guys who live around me and make up a sizable part of the population of greater Houston/Galveston.  “I’ll probably need a place to flop when I come out there…” he added.

I moved out here a little over twenty years ago now.  Neither Johnny, nor any of my siblings has ever been out here to visit.  It’s not a quick drive down the road, like Atlanta.  But, this is the energy capitol of the entire planet and still bristles with jobs that require men like Johnny to do them.  Hell, he may just be right at home here—who knows?

More to come…

S

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This is really happening

Tormenta, as many of you know, was not my first publishing rodeo.  The Fabulous Feathermaye and I co-authored a book that came out in 2004.  When we got that little deal, we were utterly tickled to be going into print.  It is also when we began to learn about the publishing process, both what it was, and what it has now become.

Our first little book got a few good reviews, but the editing was so horrible that it was embarrassing to have anybody read it.  Common sense told us to let it die, and we did, regrouping and continuing on with new work while trying to claw our way back into a publisher’s door, one that isn’t an “Author-mill” that only wants new authors with a memoir to sell to their family and friends; those guys were churning them out like confetti and we simply had to wait out our contract’s seven year period (that ends next year) just to get the rights back away from those…people.

I’m not sure what’s tougher: learning to write a good story that stands up to scrutiny (especially if you’re a dyslexic who can’t spell), or figuring out how to bang our way into the market place.  I started out nearly twenty years ago, long before email and electronic submissions were accepted.  Back then, you had to write a book, have it printed out down at the local printer, then use good ole snail mail to send it in.  Since no one knew who I was, I’m quite sure most of those went on top of the proverbial slush pile, some may still be gathering mold somewhere in New York.  Who knows?  Like darts on a map, I was just hoping for some luck.  No dice…

As this new age of publishing came to life, the big houses began to pull back, most not even accepting cold submissions any more, no more editors sending back my work with handy corrective notes or suggestions (in red ink, of course), or worse, those rejection letters that generally say: ‘Thanks, but you don’t fit what we’re looking for these days…’ ad nauseam.  

Another door slammed, another door knocked on, another no-answer.   My friends, I have hundreds of those.  Each one now represents the start of more attempts at the great American novel, and inside each of those flawed attempts, grew the strands of something better, something that I had been looking to develop over all these long years: Style.

Just before we sent our first book off to the Author mill, we did get a call from a huge talent agency.  The main partner prides himself as ‘The Literary Lion’, and his agency’s body of work backs that up.  Feathermaye and I were still living in the Virgin Islands when I answered the phone one day…

“Hello, is this S. Bond Herndon?”

Understand, I had decided to use that pen name long before this phone call, but I’d never had anyone actually talk to me, much less address me by that name. 

“Um…yes, this is he.”

For three days and nights we thought we had won the goddamn lottery.  This guy and his round-table of experts had us pegged as a hot property!  I called a couple of buddies, just to sort of pinch myself about it all being real.  Then, the following Monday, of course it was a Monday, we were told by his secretary that they had decided to ‘go another way’.  Evidently, they had a big deal going with a book they had just sold at auction.  The book was about angels and that sort of thing.  I suppose they did not figure it best to back one book about angels and another about dark forces and New Age philosophy.  It was tough; the breath was punched from our sails.  But, when I decided to dedicate myself to this I told myself that I would not back away, no matter how tough it got.  I know an old Blues man who would just say: “That’s payin’ yo’ dues, boy…”

Maybe he’s right.

My new publisher is not Random House, Simon/Schuster or Putnam.  They're small, and they’ve been selective, for the most part; they certainly do not take on anybody with a few words written down on paper.  But, they seem to be doing things right, so far.  The Internet has opened up the world for writers and now we’re working together to simply spread the word without a few hundred thousand bucks to spend on an ad campaign. 

Thanks to all of you who’ve pre-ordered from the site.  I don’t mind signing several hundred copies at all… really…I don’t.  The publisher’s expectations have been blown away so far and we’re beginning to mix in advertising—look for those facebook and google ads!—lots of other promos as well as the possibility of a book launch party…something I had not even thought about.  My guess is it won’t be a black tie affair and we won’t even get a whiff of a New York style cocktail party, probably beer, in longnecks, at the local Ice House down the street.  That’s just Texas style, and we don’t mind that one bit—yeehaa!

More to come…

S

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