Lately I've become somewhat obsessed with the people who have bad intentions with the read-marketing trains. There are several and several kinds; one or two are even admins, and still don't recognize the value of plain dealing.

By plain dealing I mean, I read yours, you read mine, or, I read yours, you read somebody's. Maybe they got stuck with mine and really didn't want it. But it seems to me that if they put their book under mine, they agreed to read it. And many times they still don't.

I think phones could be responsible for this and I think that, if it's a review site in particular, they feel that if they give me a review, it doesn't matter. Like I don't really care about the reads, only the review. And that's partly because they could read my whole book and I'd still only get less than fifty cents. But in fact, I care about the reads more than the review. I have enough reviews. I'm looking for readers. So when they stiff me, I'm taking it personally. Often they stiff me for the review too. Why am I acting all honest on these sites? (I read their whole book and give a review)...don't know. To me, I'm a plain dealer.

So what I've found is that, over time, I don't feel good about leaving my fives all over the place for people who are basically dishonest. I'd rather just get the five out of there, or better yet, make it a four or even a three, if they're going to be rude about it. Notice I don't say two. A two, I figure, is a personal insult, a slap to the face, a disrespect. A two is even worse than a one, if that's possible, although mathematically it's not as bad. But my situation is this; I'm not mad enough to slap them in the face, but I'm too mad to let a five sit there and walk away. I'll take them down a notch or whatever I have to so that I don't hold anything against them anymore.

It's like anything else - you want to keep good relations with the people around you, just on general principle. You never know when you might need them. I've made a lot of really close friends doing this and I value them. THere are a lot of other people who I value but I intend to keep good relations with them, too, as much as possible. The shysters, why do I even need them? The less I invest in them the better.

OK I'll admit, I'm slogging. I was carrying five books when I woke up; one I finished fairly quickly, as it was a kids' book; the other was a very formulaic but well-written crime thriller; I finished that too. It was very lively, I'd even call it good, but I was a little disturbed by the formula.

Then I set to the business of the day, which was a couple of read-onlies that I am slogging through. It's more because it's not my genre than it is because they are poorly written, though both authors have grammatical faults. I have come to be used to some grammatical problems; they don't irritate me as much as they used to; but I still have trouble with non-sentences and wrong-word situations (then/than, bare/bear) than anything else. And apostrophes; those are like the plague.

One of them is a book that simply tells you how to be happy. Now I know my wife has read dozens of these, and she's still not happy, but I'm relatively happy already, and have never read a single one. That's because, many of the things she mentions, I stumbled upon in my own search. A lot of it is what goes on in your mind, and how you handle such things as jealousy, anger, etc. Not taking this from the book, but really you're kind of like standing on the bank of a river letting some things go by and pulling others out of the river. But the river just keeps coming back around so you have to get in good habits of choosing what you let go by.

The other is your typical violent fantasy. Death is a very handsome guy, a ruthless killer, but oh what abs. Now this I find kind of funny while I talk about it but while I'm reading it, I find the narrator to be somewhat naive and reckless. This must certainly appeal to young people a lot.

There is yet one more book, a coming-of-age edgy kind of book like mine, and I actually like that one, but because it has a generous time limit I'm feeling more obligated to do the two read-onlies, which are probably overdue or at least soon will be.

Why do I get so far over my head? Basically I'm avoiding doing what I should be doing, which is pulling together one of four or five books that are waiting to be finished. I don't like to work on them when I'm feeling kind of sick, as I am now, or when I'm highly distractable by kids and life. But I will finish those, I promise!