Today my book is being featured on Sally Cronin’s prominent Smorgasbord book promotion blog
Leonberger In Online Preston Hollow Peoples Magazine
Three weeks ago, I made a post about our late Leonberger Bronco (and my book) being featured in a local Dallas magazine called the Preston Hollow Peoples Magazine. This magazine has 47,000 subscribers. In that post I posted screenshots of the printed version. Today they posted the free online version of the magazine. Click here to see the article about Bronco, my book and me. Click here to see the front page of the online version of Preston Hollow Peoples Magazine. The headline of my article can be found on the front page.
Bearing False Witness and The Bubble Reputation
This is a Leonberger blog but sometimes I post about books that are not about Leonbergers but that are books that I want to promote. This is a book I would like to promote. Last week I read The Bubble Reputation, Kindle Edition by Alex Craigie. I loved this book and therefore I would like to promote it. It comes in a paperback edition and a Kindle edition.
- Paperback – October 12, 2022, publisher : Ashford Carbonell Publishing, ISBN-10 : 0995696640 ISBN-13 : 978-0995696648, 134 pages, Item Weight : 7.7 ounces, Dimensions : 6 x 0.31 x 9 inches, it is currently $4.38 on Amazon. Click here to order it from Amazon.com.
- Kindle – October 11, 2022, Ashford Carbonell Publishing, ASIN B0BHZL8J9G, 147 pages. It is currently $2.99 on Amazon.com. Click here to order it from Amazon.com.
Today, just 10 minutes before I started working on this post, I came across a great and allegedly true story on Facebook. It was touching, infuriating, and engaging, but having developed a nose for fake stories on social media I suspected it might not be true. I looked in the comment section. People were touched, excited and infuriated by the story, and no one questioned the story except one person who stated that it was a fake story. I checked out the story and indeed, it was just another fake story debunked by snopes.com and by Stanford University, and it also contradicted what Wikipedia had written about the same incident. What I would like to point out is that almost everyone fell for it instantly. Almost everyone forgot to ask the simple basic question, is it true?
The incident I am hinting at in my review below was when a friend of mine shared a story on Facebook that could be defamatory of Syrian refugees. The source claimed that mainstream media did not want to tell the story, which is why it was not well known. I have learned that such claims are a red flag, so I checked it out. Snopes.com debunked it stating that it was false. The only source carrying the story was a site that intentionally creates and disseminates fake news and stories, and there were no records of the people in the story even existing. So, I left a helpful comment explaining that sorry, but it turns out that this is a fake story and provided a link to Snopes.com. My friend deleted my comment. I was the only one questioning the story and I got no support from anyone. I asked why he did that. He was angry with me for posting the comment and he told me I could be al-Qaeda’s lawyer, which had nothing to do with the story. After I tried posting it a second time and explaining that this was “bearing false witness” intentionally using religious language I hoped would work with him, he blocked me. Later on, he sent me a friend request which I briefly accepted. However, I soon blocked him after seeing that he had not learned his lesson. We are no longer friends.
Social media is full of fake stories, ill-intentioned trolls, conspiracy theorists, Qanon BS, defamatory fake news about actors and other celebrities, and people eat it up way too easily. That is a big problem. I believe I have noticed that it is especially my demography, white men of the age 50+ that keeps falling the most for fake news and stories. I read a study that confirmed what I believe I am seeing; my demography is the worst in this regard. I think it has a lot to do with a lack of social media savviness and a tendency to believe what you want to believe. Your existing beliefs and your gut feelings are your worst enemy in this regard. I believe a science background can really help you with this. In Science you learn to focus on the evidence.
What I wanted to say with all this, is that we may always have had this problem, but it has been amplified through social media and internet and don’t think for a minute that the gullibility and crazy behavior of people in this novella is in any way unrealistic or exaggerated. I also want to highlight how big of a problem this is. False news and conspiracy theories has resulted in genocide. Why do we have to believe what we want to believe rather than what is most likely true? Why can’t we be more rational? This is an incredibly important topic. Anyway, enough of my rant, now to the book.
The Bubble Reputation from the Amazon Page
If you want to destroy someone’s reputation, social media provides the perfect tool.
Emmie Hobson, children’s author and TV presenter, is riding high on a wave of popularity when an unscrupulous newspaper editor, desperate for a scoop, brings Emmie’s world crashing down.
Social media picks up the baton and a terrifying backlash of hate and abuse is unleashed. Threats are made and there are those, inflamed by the rhetoric, prepared to take the law into their own hands.
My Amazon Review of The Bubble Reputation
Bearing False Witness
Emmie Hobson is a popular children’s books author and TV personality. She is happily married, has a great relationship with her parents, and a rocky relationship with her sister who is an addict. One day an editor for a gossip magazine decide to slander Emmie in an attempt to boost sales. She fabricates evidence to support her false accusations. Despite the evidence being questionable a lot of people are quick to believe it and social media is used to supercharge and spread the false accusations even further, while inventing new rumors. People eat it up and suddenly Emelie is a hated pariah and a target for emotional and physical abuse.
I think this book is an important wakeup call for all of us because it highlights a very dark side of humanity that has grown worse. Gossipers, rumor mongers, conspiracy theorists, and mean trolls are tremendously successful today, thanks to social media, internet and divisions in society. “Bearing false witness” is a special kind of black lie that can kill. Defamatory conspiracy theories enabled the holocaust, the Tutsi genocide and the recent genocide in Myanmar. This is a very serious topic.
I found the apparent extreme gullibility of the public in this story to be very believable, perhaps even an understatement, because of what I’ve seen on social media. For example, someone posted a false defamatory story on Facebook, and I responded with a comment debunking it. My comment included a link to snopes stating that the story was false, I pointed out that the only source for the story was a fake news creation website, and that the story had other plausibility issues. Despite all that, all other commentors on the story believed it and the person posting it launched a silly ad hominem attack against me instead of arguing the case. Social media is indeed wild.
I can add that I don’t think it is as much gullibility as a desire to believe ill about others that is rooted in envy, politics, worldviews, bias, plain meanness, or perhaps a desire to be judgmental or feel superior. Accepting unsubstantiated claims whilst being very skeptical of what you don’t want to believe, isn’t skepticism but the opposite of it. We need to do better, use common sense, and examine the evidence. The story about Emmie, despite being fiction, makes it very clear as to why.
This is one of the most intense thrillers I’ve ever read, and it is very timely. The author is describing a very believable scenario that grows more and more intense and darker and darker. Many of the characters in the book are infuriating and yet so average, so unethical and foolish, yet so sure of their righteousness, so incredible yet so realistic. The author also describes the love between Emmie and her parents, and her husband, and their unyielding support for each other throughout all this craziness. The book asks us to be careful about what we believe and to stand up against rumors and lies. It is a gripping page turner that will shake you to your core while asking you to think. It describes a slice of a drama that we are all part of everyday. I highly recommend this excellent thriller.
About the Author
Alex Craigie is the pen name of Trish Power.
Trish was ten when her first play was performed at school. It was in rhyming couplets and written in pencil in a book with imperial weights and measures printed on the back.
When her children were young, she wrote short stories for magazines before returning to the teaching job that she loved.
Trish has had three books published under the pen name of Alex Craigie. The first two books cross genre boundaries and feature elements of romance, thriller and suspense against a backdrop of social issues. Someone Close to Home highlights the problems affecting care homes while Acts of Convenience has issues concerning the health service at its heart. Her third book. Means to Deceive, is a psychological thriller.
Someone Close to Home has won a Chill with a Book award and a Chill with the Book of the Month award. In 2019 it was one of the top ten bestsellers in its category on Amazon.
Recent Commenting Difficulties on WordPress
This post is just a public service announcement. Have you noticed that it recently has become significantly more difficult to leave comments on certain WordPress websites? Your website might be one of them and you may not know about it. The people having difficulty leaving comments on your website may have a hard time telling … Continue reading “Recent Commenting Difficulties on WordPress”
This post is just a public service announcement. Have you noticed that it recently has become significantly more difficult to leave comments on certain WordPress websites? Your website might be one of them and you may not know about it. The people having difficulty leaving comments on your website may have a hard time telling you.
I like to use the emails I get by subscribing to certain WordPress websites. I can often read the post in my email inbox and then press the comment link. I also like to go straight to the webpage and read and comment there. When I do this (both cases), I have issues with leaving comments on some people’s posts, and I’ve come to realize, it’s not just me, it is a general problem. There is an alternative way of leaving comments, and that is to use the WordPress-Reader. This is an indirect way of leaving, or sending, a comment, and this seems to always work. A friend of mine, Alex, pointed this out to me and I finally got around to doing it this way instead. However, if people have issues with leaving comments on your website you may not be aware of it, for quite understandable reasons. You will just get less comments.
This is typically what happens when you try to leave a comment on the websites that have commenting issues. Again, this happens only on some websites, but it is a quite common problem.
- The Reply button is greyed out. You are asked to login to WordPress even though you are already logged in.
- So, you login to WordPress (despite already being logged in).
- After logging in two duplicate WordPress-Reader windows popup and cover almost the entire page.
- To get rid of them so that you can write your comment you have to reload the page because there’s no close feature. Doing this will erase whatever you have already written in the comment box.
- Now you can typically write and post your comment (but not always)
- In some cases, it does not matter what I do, I cannot leave a comment directly from the webpage (but it is possible using the Reader).
I talked to a Happiness Engineer about this. I was told that they are streamlining the commenting feature and there are currently some issues. He did not seem to know the extent of the problems but appreciated people’s input on the issue. He did not have an exact date as of when it will be fixed.
Have you noticed these problems?
If you see this on my webpage, please use the contact page to tell me (or comment if you can).
The Life of a Dog Told by the Dog
This is a Leonberger blog but sometimes I post about books that are not about Leonbergers but that are books that I want to promote. This is another one of those. I just read Sam, A Shaggy Dog Story (Kindle Edition), by Sally Cronin. It was a book that I loved and therefore I want to promote.
- Kindle – November 10, 2013, Publisher : Moyhill Publishing, ASIN B0CBTY2K5C, 108 pages. It is currently $3.50 on Amazon.com. Click here to order it from Amazon.com.
This book is about a dog, a Collie named Sam who comes to live with David and Sally Cronin in Ireland. The story of Sam’s life is told through his voice by Sally. Due to the author’s skill and understanding of her dog this way of imaginary telling of a dog’s story works extremely well. It is plausible and beautiful. Click here to view my review on Amazon.
My Amazon Review of Sam, A Shaggy Dog Story
The Story of the Life of a Dog Told by the Dog
This is the story of the Collie Sam, told through the voice of Sam. His mistress Sally imagines what he must have been thinking as we follow him on all of his adventures, including his happy, sad and crazy moments, throughout his life. Sam has many dog and cat friends, and he understands cat language and so does his mistress. There was his friend Henry, the almost dead stray cat who found a home with Sam’s family. There was Danny the mischievous little dog who led Sam astray, the dangerous attack by the big vicious dog, the car rides, the beaches, and how Sam learned how to say a word in English, for real, and much more. It is the life of a dog, told by the dog himself, and it is a story well told.
Sam is also a very well-traveled dog and as you are reading the book you will learn something about traveling with dogs within the EU. You also learn something about the dog owner’s experience. I think the author is apt at figuring out how a dog must be feeling and what he might be thinking in different situations. She is well informed about dog behaviors and the reasons behind them. I’ve owned many wonderful dogs throughout my life, and I felt that the author was interpreting dog behavior and putting it into imagined dog feelings and thoughts in a very plausible manner.
I think this was a fun and interesting read. It was a real page turner, well it’s kindle, so location traverser, as you want to find out what is going to happen to Sam next. It is gripping and emotional in a good way. I think putting the story of Sam as if it is told by Sam is a clever and unique way of presenting the story of a dog’s life. I highly recommend this kindle book to all dog lovers.
About the Author
Sally Cronin is the author of sixteen books including her memoir Size Matters: Especially when you weigh 330lb first published in 2001. This has been followed by another fifteen books both fiction and non-fiction including multi-genre collections of short stories and poetry.
As an author she understands how important it is to have support in marketing books and offers a number of FREE promotional opportunities on her blog and across her social media. The Smorgasbord Bookshelf.
I am testing themes with sidebars
I am trying out a new wordpress theme. I previously had twenty twenty. This is twenty sixteen. Twenty twenty did not have a sidebar and I wanted a sidebar so I could remove all the book cover images and have them placed in the sidebar. That way the posts could be about just the post topic. I am not sure what to think about it. The comment/like link (to the left) is hard to see and all 160 posts I’ve ever made are crammed on top of each other on the landing page, well that’s https://leonbergerlife.com/
Do you have a sidebar on your site? Which theme are you using?
I have to think this through. Any opinions are welcome.
Leonberger In Preston Hollow Peoples Magazine
Our Leonberger Bronco, well Le Bronco von der Löwenhöhle, and my book about him, as well as an interview with me by journalist Kersten Rettig was featured on page 10 of the Preston Hollow Peoples Magazine. This magazine is mailed to 47,000 households in north Dallas. Below are pictures from the on-line version of Preston Hollow Peoples Magazine. You can probably not read the text in the top picture. However, I added additional pictures which are enlarged/zoomed-in versions, and you may be able to read those. Also, if you click on any of the pictures you are taken to the magazine where you can zoom in and enlarge as much as you want.
Just as an FYI, Preston Hollow is an area in north Dallas with a long history. Some of its residents include former President George W. Bush, Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban, Dallas Stars owner Tom Hicks, Dirk Nowitzki, Jordan Spieth, Tyler Seguin, and the late Ross Perot who once was a Presidential candidate.
Name Change Successful In the Amazing Leonberger Database
There is a World Wide Independent Leonberger Database (WILD) which features more than 166,000 Leonbergers. That is a lot considering that there are 30,000 Leonbergers in the world and if you go back in time there were many fewer. In fact, genetic research has shown that there are only 22 founder animals (the ancestors of all living Leonbergers) who lived soon after the Second World War. By selecting the search item from the menu and then typing in the name of your Leonberger you can most likely find your dog in the database. If your Leonberger’s entry does not have a photo you can email them a photo, which I did.
Another update I requested and had approved was an update to Bronco’s name. We wanted to name our Leonberger Bronco. It was our son’s choice. However, the Leonberger community and breeders have rules about how to name your dog. My wife Claudia was told that Bronco would not work because the litter Bronco was part of needed to have names beginning with an ‘L’. You can see the full sibling screenshot below. So, Claudia said “Let’s do Le Bronco”. Imagine our surprise when his birth certificate stated that his name was “Lets Do Le Bronco von der Löwenhöhle”. Well, “Lets Do Le Bronco von der Löwenhöhle” begins with an ‘L’. His birth certificate name including the unexpected preamble “Lets Do” made its way into the database. Fortunately, the World Wide Independent Leonberger Database recently updated his full name to “Le Bronco von der Löwenhöhle” upon my request.
I should explain that the database entries feature not only name, birthdate and birthplace, kennel, etc. It also contains health related information including important tests, genetic defects and inbreeding coefficients (COI). Note that Bronco lived in Dallas, Texas, but he was born at Kennel Löwenhöhle outside Vancouver, Canada.
I followed Bronco’s ancestors back on his father’s side 22 generations. The last one with a photo was 17 generations back, born in 1922. However, ancestry is not a straight line along the father’s and the grandfather’s line. It is an ever-growing ancestry tree involving 2, then 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, etc., ancestors, so Bronco has many ancestors with photos.
What about you? Do you know your dog’s or cat’s ancestry tree? How about photos, illnesses, and inbreeding coefficients? How about your own lineage?
A Young Canadian Leonberger With My Book
With today’s post I just wanted to show a photo of a beautiful young Leonberger called Hachi with my book. Brenda Saito allowed me to use the photo, which I took from her review on the Canadian Amazon site. I am so grateful for this review. You can read the review by clicking on the photo, and you can view the entry for my book on amazon Canada by clicking here.
Leonberger Book Reviews Maybe
On Amazon my Leonberger book has 13 ratings including 11 reviews and on Goodreads I have four reviews and on Bookbub and Barnes & Noble none. All the reviews are wonderful and supportive five-star reviews. I am extremely grateful for this .💖
However, with this post I would like to shamelessly request additional reviews. The vast majority of readers do not write reviews. I know, I am the same way. It is hardly something you expect. But if anyone out there who has read my book and has not written a review somewhere, is willing to do just that, I would be very grateful. I would like to stress that the review certainly doesn’t have to be a four-star, or five-star review and they don’t need to be elaborate or wonderful or long. Short honest reviews between one-star and five-star would all be very helpful to me.
If you go to the Amazon page for my book and you scroll down until you see “Customer Reviews” on the left-hand side, there is a white button below “Customer Reviews” bars that says, “Write a customer review”. You can also get here by clicking on the small blue text near the top that says, “13 ratings”. Once you click on the “Write a customer review” button you will see four fields “Overall rating”, “Add a headline”, “Add a photo or video”, and “Add a written review”. “Add a photo or video” is optional, and I admit I have never used it. You can either type something in the “Add a written review” box or copy from, for example, Microsoft Word. Note that Amazon takes a few days to publish a review after it has been submitted.
It works similarly on Barnes & Noble but here you have a blue button towards the bottom on the left. On Bookbub there is a red button towards the bottom left and on Goodreads there is a black “write a review” button in the middle halfway down.
By clicking on any of the pictures below you can visit my book on Bookbub and Goodreads.
Leonberger Life 