Behind Our Eyes Book Launch Presents Strange Weather Anthology with Multiple Authors Author/Editor Marlene Mesot Presenter May 8, 2023 Readers Note: If you have found this transcript to be helpful, please take a moment to let us know by sending a brief message to Marlene Mesot at: Marl.Mesot@gmail.com. You may also contact someone you know in our writers’ group. Thank you very much. Marlene Mesot: Good evening, everyone. Welcome to this Behind Our Eyes Presentation, BOE Book Launch featuring Strange Weather Anthology: True Quirks of Nature for Monday, May 8, 2023. My name is Marlene Mesot. I'm the editor and creator of the anthology, but we have a total of eleven extremely talented authors who have their own personal perspective on some amazing weather phenomena. You'll never look at whether the same way again once you hear from all of our wonderful authors. In this book we have eighty-seven print pages. It's available now in ebook and print. You have to order it because it's an on-demand book, but it is available everywhere. Wherever you can buy ebooks and print books, Barnes and Noble, Apple, Amazon, Walmart, Kobo, Google Play, all places you would go for your books. So we are going to be doing a presentation. I'll be calling on the authors But before we start with that, I am going to ask David Dvorkin, the real editor, to describe our cover, and I'm gonna try to do the screen share here to bring the cover up. David, okay, go ahead. Thank you. David Dvorkin: Thank you. Actually, I'm not the real editor. I'm just the formatter. Actually, Marlene is the real, real editor, real, real editor. Okay, well, I found this amazing photograph online. The complete photograph is the stunning landscape shot. I know even where it was taken, but it shows sort of a golden yellow sky with clouds, and then off to one side there’s this amazing island. Unfortunately, I had to cut part of it because the cover, the book wouldn't show the whole thing. But this is an island and then there's this I don't know what else, and then gloomy and threatening clouds overhead, and the light and just amazing brown, gold, yellow, light. It's just an amazing thing. And I put over that, I put the title, Strange Weather Anthology, and a kind of yellow gold to kind of match the cover of the sky, and same thing for the name of the editor at the bottom, same color, and then across the middle is the subtitle, True Quirks of Nature and I put that in black, with a kind of yellow glow around it, too, I thought, to kind of capture the mood of the threatening, but very beautiful weather scenery. Marlene: And do you wanna mention the name of the photographer? David: Yeah, let me see if I have that somewhere. I should have that recorded on the inside ready to go. Marlene: I don't know how to pronounce it. David: Where did it go? Hold on this! Marlene: I know it’s Johannes, but I don't want to pronounce his last name. David: Oh yeah, it's Johannes Plenio. And I found this online on one of the free sites, the sites you are allowed to use the photography without paying for it. ‘Course they gave his name. The name is in the book. The copyright page gives his name. So if you really wanted to find more, I didn't look for more pictures by him, but I'm seeing he has lots of wonderful photographs online. Marlene: And David also did some great fixing with photos that are included in the book. So he's done a phenomenal job with this, and I thank him very much. Thank you so much, David. David: You're welcome. Marlene: Okay, Patty, are you here? Patty Fletcher: I am here. Marlene: Alright! Here is our first author, Patty Fletcher. Patty Fletcher: I didn't think about going first. So I guess we're gonna do alphabetical order. Marlene: Oh, no! No random! Patty: Random. Well, okay. So for those who do not know me, my name is Patty Fletcher, and I'm an author and content, slash, social media, marketing assistant. I live in Kingsport, Tennessee, and my writing and marketing goal is to bridge that great chasm which separates the disabled from the non-disabled and when Marlene came to me and asked me if I wanted to contribute a hundred different things went through my head of what I could share, and then I took forever deciding, and then finally, like a strike of lightning, Marlene said, I must have it. It's time. And so I came up with a poem. I had recently moved into a new place. I felt like I had been dropped off into the moon, and I experienced a storm while out walking my dog. And so it was kind of a story slash poem together, which is in the anthology, and I'm proud to be a part of it, and thank you so much. Marlene: Thank you. Thank you, Patty. Now is Jackie here? Jackie Collins: Yeah, I'm here. Marlene: Wonderful. Go ahead, Jacky Collins. Jackie: Okay. First of all, Marlene and photographer cover photo, all of you, thank you for doing this. I really appreciate it. And secondly, I read the stories I wanna also acknowledge and thank all the authors. I just thought the stories were great. I'm from Colorado, between Loveland, we live close to Berthoud. Let's see, I'm retired. I'm sure writing forever. Recently, me and two co-authors have just had a book published, and what it's about, it's Telling Tales and Sharing Secrets. We've been together as a writing group for twenty-five years, and so we just felt, we've had instructors encourage us and stuff, and what the book is about. It's just our stories, how we stayed together. It's not really how to write, and then let's see, the other thing is, I've written a memoir which is still sitting in my file drawer after eighteen years, which I have not put out there yet. I had a husband and a wonderful dog. I walk every day and that's about it, I guess. Marlene: Okay, thank you very much, Jackie, and welcome. It's good to have you here. Jackie: Thank you. Marlene: Next we will hear from John Cronin. John Cronin: I’m here. I'm living in Southern Ontario with my wife. The story that I wrote took place, would be probably nineteen seventy-nine, in February. I got up, looked out, and I saw these big snowballs all over the place. So I just went out, on the snow mobile and started busting snowballs. It was the first time I had ever written anything. I just joined the group last year, and I had never before written anything that was, what would you call it? Fiction, or that wasn't for a university degree. Everything I had written to Lynn was for philosophy and political science, so it was completely different writing for me and I've enjoyed it. I've learned so much from this group. I'm also working on a memoir right now. I guess that's all I got. Marlene: John's story is phenomenal. He's talking about giant snowballs, literally all over the place. And it's just unbelievable. And next we will hear from Leonard Tuchyner. Leonard Tuchyner: Hi! Well, I'm not sure what I'm supposed to talk about, but I can mention the two stories I wrote. One was about actually witnessing fireballs of lightning running across farmland, and the other one was being chased by a tornado down a highway. Leonard: I live in Virginia, and what I should tell you is that I've been exposed to the weather more than I should have. I used to drive and when I couldn't drive, I rode a bicycle and when I couldn't ride a bicycle I used the moped, and one of the things I did was to travel over the Blue Ridge Mountains at least once a week and sleep over and then come back because I had an office there, and I witnessed every sort of a winter problem that there was. I remember I traveled about seventy miles to woo my wife at the time, and she lived on a very steep hill, and I was able to go the seventy miles. But when I got to her hill the car would not go up. That hill was so slippery, and I had to push it sideways to the curve and walk the rest of the way up. So if there has been weird weather, I probably have experienced it. Marlene: That adds very interesting, because, everybody says if you don't like the weather, wait a minute, and it's actually true everywhere. Next we're gonna hear from Cleora Boyd. Cleora Boyd: Well, hello there! Well, I want to thank Marlene for accepting my little set of stories to go into the anthology. When she first sent out her email, asking for weather events, the first thing that popped into my mind was an event that happened shortly after I came to Fort Worth. It was a Saturday morning, and it was typical for me to take my trash out. So I went out on the landing, down the stairs, and trotting off towards the dumpster, and I just had this weirdest feeling that I was being followed, that I was being watched. Well, a little bit nervous about this, I started looking around, and couldn't see anybody or anything, so I kept going. Still this strange feeling. Finally, I noticed it was shiny in front of me, but it was cloudy behind me, kind of cloudy and damp behind me. I looked up, and there's this dark grey cloud, just sort of creeping along down the middle. There’s an access road, kind of an access road to the two apartment complexes. It had the parking and car ports on either side, and there's cloud about the width of this other access road, floating along, not raining. Not. Cloudy behind me, sunny in front. So I swear that thing stopped when I looked up at it, and I finally I said, Okay, fine. And I kept walking. It followed me all the way out to the dumpster, keeping past me, and then I thought, now I gotta get back to my apartment, so I turned around, and about that time it started to rain. But it was the weirdest feeling to just have this cloud creeping along. Finally it was a low hanging cloud, just about the height of the complexes, and I can't help but wonder if it had not been between the complexes, whether it would’ve bumped into them and stopped. Cleora: But it didn't, and there are couple of other things the rain that I experienced. I came home from work one day, well at lunchtime, and it was bright and sunny. No clouds in this sky, you know, as I came in, drove into my garage, and it was raining in my backyard. First I thought it was some kid playing a prank or something, and I checked, but no rain. Nothing. Sunny and bright in the front yard, raining in the backyard. It rained about thirty minutes. It never moved into the front yard. I don't know if it rains on other people's yards, or just mine, and there was a couple of other little things. Cleora: The other thing that's mentioned is a tornado in nineteen seventy, May eleventh tornado in nineteen seventy in Lubbock. It was really, really, hot that day. I mean, it was like you could feel the heat bouncing up off the street. And it's interesting. If it hadn't been for that I'd have probably been out at L C C at the time. The tornado hit, but now I hear on the news where, when they are talking about the weather, whether or not we're gonna have threatening weather, it talks about like if it's too hot it interferes with some kind of climate thing that it shouldn't form. It sure didn't help anything that day. I tell you what, it was a very threatening storm. So these are my little contributions to the anthology that I hope people will enjoy, and that's all I have. Marlene: Thank you, Cleora. Now we can hear from Carol Farnsworth. Carol Farnsworth: Okay, I had two selections that were put in this home. And Marlene, I have to tell you thank you for suggesting that great idea. But both of these selections, they happened about forty years from each other. Carol: The first one was called “Neptune's Revenge”, and this happened when I was seventeen and on a boat trip in the Mediterranean with a group of a hundred musicians. We are on our way to Tenesha to do a concert, and we were caught in a hurricane, and I was about one of six that did not get terribly sick, and so we're running around the boat, having a great time watching the waves, until we're finally told to go down under and just stay there. So it's an interesting story of what can happen to you. Hopefully it will not happen to anyone else. But I enjoyed the experience afterwards. Carol: And my second story was called “With the Wind”, and this was when my husband and I were tandem riding, not now, but we used to go twenty to thirty miles. So we went about fifteen miles and went to turn around and since I live near Lake Michigan, the winds and the storms can come up very quickly. There was a bank of storm clouds, and we could see it was starting to rain to beat the band, and we got on our bikes, and we had to peddle our butts off trying to stay against or in front of this storm. We finally pulled into where we parked, jumped off our bikes through our helmets in the truck, and we just made it before the fireworks started. Those are my two contributions, and I hope you enjoy all of them. Thank you. Marlene: Thank you, Carol. That's fascinating. Now we can hear Lynda Lambert. Lynda Lambert: Hi, everybody. I just wanna thank you for inviting me to participate in this project. It's really an honor to be here with all of you. I'll just say that I guess the best thing that I should say is to tell you that my mission statement in my work is, that I pursue things that are forgotten, lost or invisible, is what I do. I have two pieces in the book. Lynda: One is called tornado, alto break, and this story took place, tt began in nineteen eighty-five. We had one of the greatest tragedies since the eighteen hundreds in our state in nineteen eighty-five, when a tornado came through and ripped the whole state from one side to the other, but the night before my friend and I left on a trip. We were traveling across state to attend a workshop for artists, sponsored by Rudgers University and a Philadelphia School of Art, and we were to be living in the Poconos for ten days and out painting all day. Every day. So I tell about what it's like leaving the morning after the tornado struck, and what we saw all across the state as we traveled, and then move into our experiences there in the Pocono Mountains being outside painting all day every day, and pouring down rain, sleeping outdoors at night, and having no warm place to go, and then that land to when we came back. That was my first academic experience. And so when we come back from there, I actually entered the university, and the rest is history. After that I've had a life of art, and I'm retired now from teaching. Lynda: The second story I have is called “Visibility”, and I won't go into any of the details on that. But I'm talking about just stepping outside of my house in the early morning in the springtime, and as an artist, I'm describing what I see, feel, hear, smell and experience. I'm painting a picture, and it's done with actual words that indicate brushstrokes and colors and fluidity. And just working with the word visibility. So that's it. That's what I have. Thanks. Marlene: Thank you. Linda. Robert Sollars is also in the anthology, and he has a story about tornadoes and “Dodging Tornadoes in Tornado Alley”. I'm really surprised at the time, how well we're doing. I didn't think we’d get through it this quick. But let me see now, I think we should be able to hear from Annie. Ann Chiappetta: Hi! Everybody! This is Annie Chiappetta. I want to make meaningful connections with others through my writing. And I have an interesting story to tell you about how I got into this anthology. I didn't originally put anything in for Marlene's first call for the anthology, and I had just happened to be responding a few months later to a prompt that somebody on the Writer's Partyline had initiated, and I wrote this short fiction piece called “Harbor Squall” and Marlene contacted me and said, “You have to put this in. I want this.’ So I said okay, you can have it. So it was kind of like a last minute thing. But I'm so glad that I got included with the other writers here. You're all so talented. Your imagery and descriptions and experiences are just great. Mine is a true story. Of course, it's a nonfiction piece. I grew up on Long Island Sound, and I've experienced many, many, many storms and water experiences being on Long Island Sound and living in the lower Hudson Valley. So this was probably the most terrifying experience I've ever had other than being afraid of being eaten by a shark. So I just wanted to say that. And I really appreciate being included. And what a great idea, Marlene, and thank you everybody for listening. Marlene: Thank you, Annie. Since we are doing so well on time here, I guess I can stick my two cents in here as well. I also wanna thank Annie because she is our host, and I wanna thank Meka White for being our co-host. And you know, in the background, our technical people who, without them, this would never, ever have been possible. Marlene: So, okay, I have two pieces in here. One is a ballad. It's a poem. It's a seventy-eight line ballad that I wrote, and I'm legally blind, and we had a English mastiff dog named Toya, who lived to be thirteen years old, and she had cataracts, so she couldn't see very well either. So I used to take her out on a leash at night, and the ballad is about that. Her and I going out and experiencing things in the night. Marlene: And the second piece is an essay about a couple of different strange weather experiences. Okay. Like Cleora, I've had an experience of being in one place with the sun out and seeing a storm like next to you. It looks like somebody took a picture and split it in half and put two together. But no, it actually really happened. Marlene: Now there was another experience where my husband and I were on the way to work during a thunderstorm. The sky was completely gray. I mean totally, you know, like a wall. And there were actually a rainbow and a double rainbow during a thunderstorm. It was pouring torrents, and I actually got real pictures. So some of the pieces do have pictures with them, and in the print book there'll be black and white. But in the ebook they will be in color. I’m gonna let Marilyn tell us about Behind Our Eyes since it's a Behind Our Eyes presentation, and then we may have some time for Q and A. Go ahead, Marilyn. Marilyn Smith: Okay, thank you. And thank everybody, all the authors who have talked about their work in this anthology. That's a very meaningful thing when that many authors can get together and put a topical collection that addresses something like weather. I've certainly experienced the same weather phenomenon in Texas that Cleora did. So I know where that's coming from for sure. Marilyn: And I always like to talk about Behind Our Eyes. Many of the people who are here tonight are Behind Our Eyes members. But this program will go farther and will be on our website. So I wanna make a special welcome to any visitors here tonight or others who may be seeing it or listening to it later. Marilyn: As President of Behind Our Eyes, I've seen this group grow from just a handful of callers on Sunday night to over a hundred fourteen members now including international representation in our printed work and in our classes and discussions, etcetera. We have three anthologies. The third one should be out late summer or early fall, and we have an online magazine for writers with disabilities. It's Magnets and Ladders, and we accept submissions for non BOE members, Behind Our Eyes members. If you just want to taste the waters and see how you think working with us would be. But, as you know, from this book launch, this is a program we’re very proud to have brought into our offerings of writing programs. And we have one almost every month, and it gives writers a chance to say something about their work and get an audience for it, either, just as it comes out or as it is coming out, to showcase their work. We're not often lucky enough to have several participants who have written in an anthology. We also have classes, critique groups, a readers’ workshop. So that, yeah, you can practice for an open mic night somewhere if you choose to. We have speakers and panel discussions on Sunday nights, and sometimes critique sessions. That's two Sundays a month usually, of course, with a few board meetings and such thrown in. But Behind Our Eyes dot org is our website, and from there you can go to a contact us link if you want to ask more questions, or you can go to a Join Us. Maybe you know somebody who you think might benefit from the group. If you're not eligible for it, it's not the kind of place you need to go, but we are very welcoming of new members, and, I'm trying to look at my notes to see if I’ve forgotten anything. There's always so much to say that it's hard to consolidate it. But when you're up there looking at our website and checking out our pages, pay attention to our Special Events Page that has some recordings we've done and some special programs; Luncheon, Emily Dickinson Luncheon from National Poetry Month last year, and our monthly calendar is always up there, and that's another place if you don't see a notice about a book launch in a month, you can go on it's near the first of the month, and see if there is a book launch listed for that month. So that's all. I've got, and I'm just so glad that everybody is here. And it's really special to have this many presenters. Marlene: Yeah, it has been quite an evening, and I guess we will open it up to. So I guess Meka, get ready. Meka White: Okay. Huh! Meka laughs. John: I was just wondering when I was looking at the stories. I might think I'm the only one with the snow stories. I think because I'm in Canada? Laughter. Marlene: No, not necessarily. Just. Nobody, I think, has ever experienced what you've experienced. Cleora: Well! The snow that I've experienced is gone by six thirty a. m. If you don't get up early. You have to make a very, very small snowman, and so maybe so. Meka: Alright! Patty has her hand raised. Hi, there, Patty! Patty: Hello, Meka, everybody! First of all, thank you very much for including me. I am stunned when reading over the anthology and so, of course, I read the draft when Marlene sent it, and I have had a very busy first part of twenty twenty-three in my writing, so I've been working on two other anthologies besides this one. So the only credit that I can take is submitting to Marlene and saying, “Here you are. You may do as you wish with this material”, and I'm very pleased with the result, and I just want to say to every one of you, your work is amazing. I’m glad to know those of you who are new to me, and those that I've not seen in a while. It's a welcome surprised to see you here, so I just wanted to acknowledge everybody and your hard work, because this is one time that all I had to do was be a writer and everybody else did the hard work, and it's an odd feeling, but it's also very nice to be the writer in the group for a change. So thank you very much everybody, that's all I had. Meka: All right, and next up is Alice. Alice Massa: Thank you, Meka and congratulations, Marlene, and to all the authors. It's wonderful to hear all of you together this evening, and I have a question for John. I would like to know the diameter approximately of those snowballs. John: They went from anywhere from two and a half feet to four feet. Collective: Wow! Oh! Alice: And am I correct, John? Their somewhat hollow, of course, on the inside? Is that correct? John: Nope, they weren't hollow. There was all snow, but it was like a soft snowball. Collective: Ah! John: Okay. So like I said, you had just the right texture of snow and the right amount of wind. So that it catch a little bit of snow, and then it just rolled up a snowball. It's just like kids, when you were kids, if you had to start a snowball and you just roll it till it's about three feet and don't pack it or anything. Collective: Uh huh. John: They did come across this once before. I just read about it in the news last winter. Yeah, in Manitoba, on a lake. Alice: Thank you so much. And Marlene, can you tell us what's on the back cover of the book? Please? Marlene: You have the title the Strange Weather Anthology: True Quarks of Nature, and the Jacket summary is on the back with the, what did they call that thing, the little stamp, and then it's got the ISBN on it. Alice: The bar code. Marlene: Oh, yeah. Bar code. Okay. Alice: Thank you. Thank you, Marlene, very much. I really look forward to reading it, and I already ordered it as a kindle ebook for my Alexa reading, and I'm really looking forward to reading it tonight. So thank you very much. John: CELA! You know, the Blind Library in Canada is called CELA, and it is a book for the library. Marlene: Yes, if you can put me in touch with them, I can try to find out how to do that. John: Okay. Meka: All right, and the next person up is Peter. Peter Altschul: Hey? Thank you all for writing this anthology. I look forward to reading it, and you may have talked about this early in the program. I got on a couple of minutes late, but I'm curious to learn what the genesis of this project was. How did this project come into being in the first place? Marlene: Okay. Well. Through conversations with people about weather, strange weather happenings, and then, of course, one of Abbie's writing prompts on the Writers’ Partyline for six sentence stories, I answered, and then, you know, people kept telling me about their strange weather experiences, and I said, Gee! Wouldn't it be great to put this together into a collection. Of course, I really didn't know anything about doing an anthology at the time, but I just thought it would be really interesting, because when you've gone through something personally, it puts a whole different perspective on it, than if you're reading it on the news, and that's what I wanted to bring out in this book, plus I wanted to showcase the authors. I didn't want to just list their website. They have a short bio, and they're website or blog and a listing of their publications. Unfortunately I forgot to do that for Annie, and I didn't realize that until today. So she's the only one whose publications aren't listed. But she's definitely an author as well in her own right. Peter: So thank you for that, and I hope the folks don't mind who's hosting this. But speaking of showcases, any of you might be aware that American Council of the Blind, does an annual showcase for the performing arts, including folks reading their selections, and I know all of you have lots of selections out there. So if you want to get on the variety show, please send your material to showcase at friends in art dot org, and we will consider it for the show. Maybe some of the material in the book might be appropriate. The readings must be less than five minutes. That's the requirement. But I suspect that some of these rings would be really fabulous for our upcoming event and the deadline is May twentieth, for submissions. The actual virtual show will take place on June twenty-fourth. Meka. We would love it if you would submit something as well. Thank you. Meka: The point taken. Thank you. I will do so. Alright, and next up we have Leonard just raised his hand. Leonard: I'm just wondering whether anybody else has ever seen or experienced ball lightning, because I only did once in my entire life, for it was like the lightning took on the form of a ball, and it was just running across the fields, and it's pretty spectacular. There was a storm going on at the time. I felt like maybe I was in hell. Cleora: I’ve heard about it, but I've never seen it. The only thing I've ever seen is little dust devils, it’s little miniature tornadoes. Well. It's shaped like a tornado. They're only a few feet high, maybe eighteen inches or so, you know, running across the prairie, but never seen ball lightning. Ann: This is Annie. I've seen giant waterspouts along Long Island Sound during storms and stuff, and I've seen a number of them together, and it was the most bizarre thing. They were like dancing, and they would go together and then break apart and then dance around and go to get. It was just the most bizarre thing, and while it was happening, I felt like all the hairs on my body were sticking out like static energy. It was weird, and I’ve never seen anything like that since. It was just the most bizarre thing. Marilyn: There's supposed to be a place in southeastern Kentucky where you can see a moon bow every now and then. Collective: Oh! Marilyn: They're very rare, too, in valleys and caves. Cleora: Ooh! That would be amazing. Marilyn: Yeah, and they can't build much tourism on it, because they can't predict it well enough. Collective: Sure. Yeah. Marilyn: So it's just, you're there, whether it does, or it doesn't. Cleora: Yeah, I've never heard… Leonard: Amazing. Cleora:…of like that before. Now the waterspout. It's interesting. I read a fiction book, and it was part of the book was talking about waterspouts, and I thought it was complete fiction. But I think now it must have come from, you know, someone saying something like talking about… John: When I was in Jamaica, I met numerous Jamaicans that, out in the ocean a waterspout had come up, at the odd time. It would make it to land, and when it did it just dumped all this water, but it also dumped sea creatures. Collective: Oh! Weird. Wow! Cleora: Poor little thing. Talk about being abandoned! Laughter. Meka: Alright. Dafina. Dafina Braithwaite: Yes. So I have to apologize because I'm terrible with names. But the second person who presented told us about herself, but she didn't speak about her piece. So! Marlene: Oh, that would be Jackie. Jackie Collins. Go ahead, Jackie. Jackie: Sorry about that. Yeah, I felt bad that I didn't talk about that too. I didn't realize that we were supposed to talk about our story. I'm basically a farm girl, grew up on a farm, and of course we saw a lot of tornadoes. But to me it was just the feeling that you got, how everybody started running b asically and how we reacted as kids to how they almost became common for us, even though we were scared. So that's where it comes from. Marlene: Any more hands. Meka? Meka: Yes, Diane! Diane Landy: Hello, everyone, and thank you for having this event this evening. I just love the topic of this anthology. I think it's fascinating, and I'm so glad that you made it an anthology because it spots people from different parts of the country. And well, I guess North America, I should say, and I had one question, and I was just gonna add a comment, too. I'll do the comment first because I'll give up the floor when I say my question. I loved these moon bows, and just how this conversation is going into all these fascinating things that happen and these phenomena. We had a dry lightning storm here on the coast, and I didn't see it over the water, but I saw photographs of it the next day, and posted them up on Facebook. It was just gorgeous. These multiple lightning strikes coming down over the water. And then there was photo luminescence plankton that was glowing in the ocean below, almost like the lightning, was illuminating, and it was such a beautiful image I posted it on Facebook and of course then later discovered that this dried lightning had started eleven forest fires here, and we were later evacuated from our house, you know, a month or so later, and the smoke and it was just terrific. But weather is interesting. We just have no control over this, and it just happens. And we all have to respond and survive through it all. That's probably the only weather we have out here.Our storms are fairly mild, but we do have earthquakes, sometimes big ones. Diane: Anyway. My question is, I'm wondering if there are any plans for an audiobook version, and if not, I think someone had mentioned something about getting a kindle version with Alexa. I don't know. Does Alexa read it? I'm trying to figure out a way to get this book in a format that could be read to me. And so maybe someone can answer that for me. Thank you. Marlene: Someone want to answer the Alexa question. I can take the audio after. Meka: Paty, are you raising your hand for the Alexa question? Patty: Yes, ma'am. Anyway, if you have Kindle either on your PC or your phone, or whatever app you're using, or if you have an actually Kindle device, once you have downloaded your book onto your Kindle, then, when you have your A Lady you ask her, play Strange Weather Anthology on my Kindle, and she will play it. So there you go. It’s that easy. You can bookmark it or set your sleep timer or anything. Diane: May I ask what is the Alexa voice like? Patty: Actually, with every update it has improved. It's very clear, and she's even started with some expression which is so strange coming from an A I. I'm like that's kind of creepy. Diane: Yes. Patty: But at the same time, it's very good. So yeah, it's enjoyable. Diane: Thank you. You've just opened up a whole new world of books for me. Thank you very much. Patty: Oh, you're welcome! Ann: That's very cool. Patty: It's a pleasure. So thank you very much. And yeah. Because, like I said, this is actually kind of fun, because I didn't have to put any of this together. Diane: Yeah. Patty: Thank you so much. Marlene. You've done an awesome job. Diane: Thank you. And is there an audiobook in in the works by chance? Marlene: There may be an audio book in the future. Possibly. Yes. Yup, I will let people know if that does come about. I do have a narrator that I work with for my own series. So. Yes, it's possible, and I have books on Audible. Diane: Okay, I will get the Kindle version. I'm gonna try that out. Thanks. Bye, bye. Meka: Okay and Abbie. Abbie has her hand raised. Hello, Abbie! Abbie Taylor: Okay, perfect. Marlene, I was just wondering you mentioned you said the book was already available on Amazon and Apple. But is it also on Smash Words as well? Marlene: I do not know. Abbie: Okay. Cause. I know most of the books that DLD publishes, they are on Smash Works, unless the author otherwise requested it not be. But I thought I’d still double check. Okay, well, thank you. Patty: That I'm not sure. Okay. So it doesn't on the website that Marlene sent for the author page. I do not see it. I see Amazon and Apple, and everything. Abbie: Oh, okay. Patty: But that doesn't mean it's not there. I mean, it's okay there's a lot of links there. Abbie: Right. Patty: So if you go to that page, it lists every link, and maybe it's just not. You know, it's just the eighth, and that just came out yesterday. So maybe it just hasn't gone live everywhere. Abbie: Yeah. That's possible. Okay, well, thank you. Meka: And that was all of the raised hands. Marlene: I am just so surprised how well we've done. I was worried that we'd be here for an hour and a half, but the other thing I will say, Cheryl McNeil Fisher who is a children's author has a story about a very vivid rainbow in her piece, and she is from New York. So I guess, if we don't have any other comments or questions, Annie, you want to close? Ann: Did Leonard raise his hand again, Meka? Leonard: Yeah, okay. Yeah, of course, because I didn't know that we were at the end, this is a matter of continuing the conversation. I just had a waterspout story I could tell you very quickly. It happened in Miami, and one of my friends had a sailboat down there, a waterspout came out in the marina, lifted it up out of the water, turned it over, and dropped it back down on its mast. Collective: Oh, oh, wow! Oh, ouch, yeah. Diane: Are you sure it wasn't a whale? Collective: Huh! Oh! Ann: It was a Kraken. Diane: It was Moby. Collective: Yeah. Moby, yeah. Laughter. Marlene: You know, it's interesting that when you live in one area, you're used to the weather in that area. And then when you move to somewhere else, I'm from New Hampshire originally, and snow was nothing okay, You have it nine months out of the year. I mean, big deal. Come down to Virginia, and Southern Virginia. And you see a spit of freezing rain or a flake of snow, and people are panicking. They're like ah! But yet when they announce a tornado, we're saying, “What are we supposed to do?” And nobody else is like oh. That's not a big deal. Diane: Oh, I'm sorry I have to comment on that, because we had about three inches of snow, and it shut down freeways here, because we had no way of clearing it. Cleora: Well, they here that when I first moved to Lubbock, you know we would have ice or snow, you know, like I say, it goes away pretty quick where I grew up. Well, here, you know, the first week I was here, there was a ice storm, so I went out, and I thought, Hmm, okay, well, I'll, you know, just try and go on to work right? I got there. I was absolutely the only one there. When I have an ice storm here, you know the businesses don't even…It's just everybody understands. You don’t open till ten o’clock. Okay. Well, you know. Where do I park on this? I can't see lines or anything. Marlene: Cleora, you’re in what, Connecticut? That's true. Cleora; I’m in Fort Worth in Texas, Texas. Marlene: Oh, Oops! Sorry wrong state! Cleora: But it was so. I had never seen an ice storm like that before, but I understand now why they do that, because we have so many overpasses, and so many hills and everything. I was on my way to work that morning. You know, creeping along pretty much the only one on the road right. And I started up hill and there was a bus that had just, you know, city bus that had just reached the top. And then it turned sideways and started to slide back down the hill. And I thought, “Oh, boy, now, where do I go?” You know, ‘cause I can't go back. I can't do anything at all. Fortunately, he got control, and, you know, turned it around and got up on the knoll, but from then on, I thought, yep, that's a good place to stay, home, yup. Ann: Well, everybody! This is Annie. I want to thank everybody for coming and thank Meka so much for her technical assistance. And of course, thank all the authors and Marlene for putting this all together with the help of DLD Books. We'll have this recording up as soon as humanly possible, and I'm going to end the recording. Have a good evening, everybody! Readers Note: If you have found this transcript to be helpful, please take a moment to let us know by sending a brief message to Marlene Mesot at: Marl.Mesot@gmail.com. You may also contact someone you know in our writers’ group. Thank you very much.