The decision to have a newsletter was not an easy one for me. I didn’t come to it naturally. At first, I resented spending the time and moola sending out something I wasn’t sure anyone was going to open, let alone read. My webmistress really pushed me to do it, saying any writer worth his or her salt had one. I like salt, so I relented.

Three years ago, she began to build one. And it was an immediate disaster. The first model used SSL, I believe. If I don’t have the right name for this, it’s because I’ve blocked it out. The bad taste of it stays with me. The newsletter, itself, wasn’t actually written by me, but used info pulled from blogs I was steadily writing at the time. It was supposed to be effortless, even going out to a designated email list at a pre-designated time.

It didn’t work. Sometimes it would go out but without any information attached. Just a banner with an image of me and Tugger the Cat would show up in their emails. Other times, it would go out containing bits and pieces of Gobbledygook, not one straight word. But most of the time, it didn’t go out at all. Meanwhile, I was paying for all of this through the schnozzola.

After three months of this nonsense, I started writing them in real time. Then I was in real trouble. I had no idea what to say. Just buy my books sounded a little too blatant. And for whatever reason, I couldn’t be amusing or witty in these newsletters I was writing to a bunch of strangers. Neither informative nor entertaining, the newsletters laid there like a lump. My readership dropped off significantly. It wasn’t unusual for me to lose five to ten people a month. I was desperate.

I was ready to abandon the whole idea of a newsletter and save myself 35 bucks a month in the deal. I happened to mention my decision to Julie Smith, who not only is my publicist, but a fantastic writer, herself. She was totally against the idea of not doing a newsletter, claiming this was the only way to reach out and truly get to know your readers. Hmmmm. You mean, a newsletter is something more than just buy my books?

I should also mention, in the meantime I had been reading other newsletters, from writers like Camille Minichino and Cindy Brown. These are authors whose work I not only admire, but who have newsletters I found myself reading from top to bottom. I discovered something amazing. They not only engaged the reader but wrote about stuff they were interested in. And it had an intimacy about it, like writing to a penpal.

Armed with the idea of getting to know my readers, I became more chatty in my newsletter and even asked questions. I started receiving emails back from them filled with tidbits about their own lives. I came to know many as more than names. I learned some of their stories. They became not just readers but friends. Not only did the email list stop declining, more names were added.

And they are all really neat people. I like them. I’m happy to write to them, to share something from my life, a joke, an anecdote, or even a book I recently discovered they might be interested in reading. Sometimes I mention my own books, but not often. I also found out, incidentally, most of them do buy my books, but not because I hawk them about it, but because my style fits into their reading pleasure.

This writing a newsletter is so win-win.

Being a writer and author of 14 books and counting, I like to think I know a thing or two about words. However, I am constantly reminded that such is not always the case. I am reminded of this often by my hubby who is a walking dictionary. Truly. I’ve never known the man not to know the meaning of a word in the 41 years we’ve been together. He and Daniel Webster have a lot in common, only hubby is cuter. Sometimes when I run across a word I’ve never seen before and often don’t even know how to pronounce, I will look it up, get the meaning, and then turn to hubby with a quiz. If he doesn’t know the exact meaning immediately, he knows the roundabout. You know, a glimmer of it, enough to use it in a sentence and not make a total jackass of himself. This is where I hee-haw.

The other day I wrote to my doctor asking if it was okay to use melatonin on the rare occasion when I can’t sleep. I have sleep apnea, use a CPAP, and try to be very careful not to impinge my breathing at night. I got a message back from her that dumbfounded me: Answering your question:
Melatonin is not contraindicated with sleep apnea. Having said this is very important to treat sleep apnea with CPAP machine.
Please let me know if you need anything else I will try my best to help!

Okay. I had never seen the word contraindicated before and had no idea what it meant. In fact, I pronounced it con – train- (as in choo-choo train) -di-cated. I was at a loss and turned to hubby. He knew the word, pronounced it correctly, but wanted us to look it up to be sure he had it right. After all, my health was at stake here. So we did. Here’s what I found online:

con·tra·in·di·cate/ˌkäntrəˈindəˌkāt/verbMEDICINEpast tense: contraindicated; past participle: contraindicated (of a condition or circumstance) suggest or indicate that (a particular technique or drug) should not be used in the case in question. “surgery may also be contraindicated for more general reasons of increased operative risk”

I still had no idea whether I could use melatonin with my sleep apnea or not. Hubby was a little flummoxed, as well. So I called my heart sister, who was a medical assistant. I had to read her the message twice, especially the phrase Melatonin is not contraindicated with sleep apnea. Apparently, it was the double negative in the sentence that was confusing, at least once you knew what the word meant. Not contraindicated meant it was okay to use.

This was another reminder to me to watch how how I phrase things. The doctor could have said, Yes, melatonin is fine, Toots, and be sure to use your CPAP. I don’t think we even needed contraindicated in the sentence although now that I know the word I simply love it. Besides, broadening your horizons means learning a new word here and there. And using them. As a wordsmith, I should know that. It’s my bread and butter. But sometimes things that are contraindicated are counterintuitive.

I was about nineteen years old when I read my first P.G. Wodehouse book. I will never forget it. It was called Right ho, Jeeves and it opened up a new world for me. Until that time, I hadn’t realized books could be funny, were meant to be funny, that their only job was to make you laugh instead of cry. And through it all, the books were well-written, worth reading for their entertainment value alone.

Right Ho, Jeeves started me down a long path of P.G. Wodehouse books that took me years and years to read. This is because he wrote over ninety of them. This is also because I would go back and reread certain ones, especially the Bertie Wooster and Jeeves collection, again and again.

Even though he was writing about the mores of the 1930’s upper English class, his style, his wit, his ability to evoke hilarious images, make outlandish situations seem almost real, heavily influenced my own writing. He was my hero, my idol, someone I aspired to becoming: a writer whose words alone could make you forget your troubles.

Then one day I found out he apparently had been a Nazi sympathizer. Or maybe his wife was and he went along with it. It was never made clear how it started with him, what drew him in. But I was crushed. Everything good and noble I thought he was came crashing down. My hero not only had feet of clay, he stood for everything I considered to be cruel and evil.

I stopped reading P.G. Wodehouse. And as I look back, on some level my world was the lesser for it. His writing had given me a sense of frivolity, a carefree and colorful look at the lighter aspects of life. But I was done with him. Sometimes you can’t get past things.

Recently, a friend of mine was moving and needed to clear out her book collection. She had a huge stash of Wodehouse books. She knew I write mostly funny novels and asked me if I wanted them. I found myself saying yes. In fact, yes, yes, yes.

It wasn’t just that we were in the middle of a pandemic and my life was closed off and scary. It was more that as I entered old age, I had to admit that while he was seriously flawed in his private life, he was still a mighty fine writer. A writer whose words I’d been missing. Somewhere through the years, maybe I even forgave him. Or maybe I’m working on it. Because as much as I laugh, it’s now tinged with a certain amount of sadness. Sadness that the world is not always what it seems. Sadness that sometimes those we admire are not always worthy of it.