The Scariest Thing

What scares you more than anything else? Vampires? Zombies? Nuclear holocaust? Your mother-in-law?

How about the prospect of NO INTERNET?

Horrible thought, isn't it? No news. No email. No blogs. No YouTube. No checking Wikipedia to win that bet with your DH. No impulse purchases of some ebook you just saw praised on Goodreads.

Think about what it means to an author like me, though. I don't get to see who has commented on my blog posts. I can't see if I've gotten any response to my submissions. I don't know if anyone has sent me stories for my own anthology. I can't do promo, or research. Yes, I can write - but if I need to look up some obscure fact, or find a picture of some BDSM implement... well, I'm out of luck.

That's been my situation for the past five days. Our ADSL service has been down, and we can't seem to get our provider to do anything about it.

Now wait a minute, you may be thinking. If she doesn't have any Internet connectivity, how is she writing this blog?

Well, we've found a stop-gap measure, connecting via the slow and somewhat flaky GPRS cell phone protocol. My brilliant geek husband figured out how to share a GPRS connection among our different computers, so that we both can do at least a minimum amount of work on the 'Net. But oh! it's pretty painful.

Not that I mean to complain. I'm desperately grateful to have any connectivity at all! It does scare me, though, to see how dependent I've become. Years ago I swore I'd never get to the point where I couldn't live without the Internet. Alas, I haven't been able to keep that vow (although in all fairness, that was before ebooks, emarketing, social networks and so on...)

Needless to say, we're royally pissed with our current Internet provider after this debacle and we're actively looking to switch.

Meanwhile, if I'm not responding as quickly as usual to email or comments - if I seem less present in the cybersphere - you'll know why!

Speaking of the cybersphere, though, I do have a blog post up at the Eternal Press blog and I'm giving away a free book of BDSM erotica.  For details, just go to:

http://eternalpressauthors.blogspot.com/2012/05/interlude-on-mulholland-drive.html


I'll check in when I can!