Best Scandal Ever Downloads

For those of you going mad for Best Scandal Ever

 

Please download Best Scandal Ever Series instead – it has a picture of Honey I made you an icon on the cover. (gifted to Wolfe when I met him, for those interested in this cute tale of woe)

Best Scandal Ever on its own is a very tiring book unless you are a raw foodist, in which case it is screamingly funny.

You can tell I dig Russian heavyweights in a big way, but despite the cartooniness, it is a very tiring read, even for me.

If you get the entire collection, you will have other things to play with, like the silly poems and the love letter. The rule breaking Romance is probably an easier read.

The story probably isn’t finished yet, but for the moment the collection is complete.  I think we should call that a complete chapter.

Click below to go to the distributor for any format you like.

Thanks,

Ina

 

 

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The NHS is going after Brexit

As someone who has obviously had to keep a very close eye on the job market of late, I think it is only right that I should tell you what Head Teacher May has planned for you after Brexit.

I was hoping it was a coincidence, but I think not.

The NHS is, as we know, being dismantled and handed to private interests to manage.  This, in itself is less of a problem, as it simply means that the bloated and inefficient NHS is handed to private companies who have to at least attempt to make it work efficiently.

However, jobs are coming up now which indicate that insurance companies and ’employee benefits’ companies from overseas have been given the green light to set up systems to sell you health insurance, or to provide it as part of an employment package. I will be talking to the third one that has shown interest later today.

So, now we know this, we look back at all those people dying under welfare and health policy alike, and we see that indeed, we are not at all paranoid, we are being streamlined in preparation for a more corporatist and by it’s very nature fascistic society.

Now I know that people like my brother, the giant and Little Shiva will not be at all worried about this because they lack the insight or life experience to percieve that this is not OK.  It doesn’t affect them, so of course it is OK.

There are millions like them.  It is an unforgivable stupidity. This is about self-interest for a very limited number of people and nothing else.

There are hundreds and thousands of people who need help, whether that is with health, welfare, self-worth, etc.  According to the financial vacuum that the Conservatives commandeer, these people are scheduled for death, and you are doing nothing about it.

I have been disabled by a couple of stupid people who have ensured that I cannot do anything about it, and in any case, my mother is already dead.

Welcome to America,

I hope all the people who damage others, and who actively vote for this shit die of an uninsurable condition.  Meanwhile, if you have any money, I suggest you get your insurance cover before you develop any illnesses.

Ina

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Life Changing Moments

One of my friends on Facebook is an writer from Australia, and this week he decided to ask about life changing moments.

Out of all the horrible, interesting things that have happened the first thing that sprang to mind was

David Wolfe’s wife blocking me on Facebook.

Now at the time, I was on a knife edge.  I was grieving for my father, uncle, 2 cats and my best friend.  I had just spent 2 years researching a huge book which morphed several times as I hadn’t written anything with any purpose before, and I wanted to speak to David about the direction and how it could be used to help him.

I live in a different continent but it just so happens that we were born 12 days apart and we are oddly similar facially in photographs, despite me being a small sturdy Scottish person and him being a slight, German-American-Iranian.  This was not sufficient however, it was the whacky yet compelling presentation of usually fairly mundane health information that I was interested in.

Anyway, after years of being told how shite I was by my friends, who really just wanted me to be shite because they (probably) still feel that they are shite, I had found over a very careful year dropping in on David’s page every fortnight that we got on very well, apart from sporadic flaming tantrums on both sides, so when I was blocked by a person on his page, I just assumed it was him and was duly devastated.

When I say devastated, I mean completely destroyed.  I had just spent 6 weeks working on an incredibly well thought out yet bizarre film about him and Durianrider and I was still waiting to have a conversation about the book I was intently working on instead of wasting my time playing Farmville.

This was 2011 or 12, I forget which.  I had got through a horrific family experience and lost about 160lb at the time thanks to him, so I felt I owed him, regardless.  It was not until probably two years after this happened that I accepted that I was terribly in love, with a random stranger who just happened to be extremely famous.

Anyway after a few false starts on projects that did not work out, I finally descended into despondency but had sponged up enough of what David had to say to say fuck it, nobody wants to listen to me anyway, I might as well be louder about it.  Hence Ina Disguise was born, sometime during the writing of Best Scandal Ever.

The only reason I wrote anything at all was because I could not speak to him, and I thought it had been him that had blocked me as I knew nothing about his wife.

So now, five years after Best Scandal Ever, this has become a pivotal moment in that having been so incredibly damaged by trying to compensate for whatever anybody said was wrong with me, no longer giving a fuck allowed me to finally speak.

Admittedly, I have just done what I felt like doing, when I felt like doing it, because 24 hour care for my mother has always come first and everything else took a second place to that.  Now I have the problem of day to day survival, and that has to come first.  However, I have put time in every day, whether that is:

15 minutes to write this blog,

half an hour to spam the books to a few million people,

a couple of hours on putting a story together ,

a month of intense sewing to create a handbag

three months of intense work to create a carpet,

18 months to create the resin pieces, due to money

conceptualising new ways of putting out work, although that has been scuppered by my lack of support from other people.

 

Within a year of putting out any artwork I was in GQ.  Tatler and World of Interiors, and I now, after five years and five months have about 80,000 readers.

I do not make money out of this, but I did it on the basis that I could not otherwise ever get the message across to David, and the notion of a subversive marketing strategy that didn’t actually cost anything.

There is far more that I could be doing.  I have been quite lazy.  I should try some of the other stuff that I have in the armory – for those interested January 2016 entries have a lot of useful links you can try.

There are an awful lot of authors out there who do not understand how the marketing in publishing works, because it is not at all obvious.  I have heard some horrific stories about people spending nine years writing a book and then squandering their life savings on trying to make it sell.

This is not how it works any more.  As an author, you should regard it far more as being a pop singer.  Nobody is going to pay a pop singer they haven’t heard before, and by far the biggest challenge is getting them to notice your name in the first place.

So, although I have not made any money, I probably have more readers than David now.  This in itself is not important, this is not the point. The point is that it doesn’t matter who you are or why you do what you do.  The important thing is that you do it. I have a friend in Slovenia, an international level political journalist, that is still resisting writing her first book, on the basis that she is concerned about how it is regarded.

“Use a pseudonym and get on with it.” is my response.

The general thinking on online marketing is that you have to get people to see your name nine times before they even read the byline, so focus on that.  Wolfe is crazy like a fox, not to put too fine a point on it.  I was open enough to figure this before I started the experiment, but not everybody gets the point of Wolfe. He is a complex creature.

By the looks of things, it is time I did some edits and took this more seriously now.  To start with, it was a case of spitting the words onto a page next to a name and then throwing it out there.  Now I definitely have some attention, it is probably time to up the quality and time somewhat before I even think about money.

For those authors who read me and think how dreadful I am for putting work out free, here is the comparison:

You can spend 3 or 4k per book on marketing on the basis of getting a small proportion of it back, put out only long titles and wait for 30 years or so for someone to notice, or you can accept that nobody knows or cares who you are or what you have to say.

I think my way is better, and it is certainly cheaper and more rewarding.

Discuss.

 

 

 

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Dinner for One

One of the great things about having absolutely nobody is that I get to eat like a proper person.  This is dinner, at 2am.

One peculiarity of the last month or so is that India is featuring so heavily.  You would think I would run another 6000 miles or whatever it is to get away, wouldn’t you?

It is actually coincidental, but rather hilarious.  I also have a growing following from India on the website.

I think my next crazy adventure trip will actually be to Dubai, but I suppose I could be flexible.

I am waiting to hear from a company in India about a job which if I get it means I will be commuting from the USA to India from the comfort of the house, so I won’t have to see any more people ever again, which would be nice after that experience.

I am waiting to hear how the lovely author is getting on with my marketing strategy, although he doesn’t seem to be doing his homework so I may have to kick his ass a bit.

I did have to block one man, who was looking for his friend in Germany, because he got bossy very quickly and I was very busy promoting the Porn Star story at the time.

The Porn Star has unfortunately disappeared, so I am a bit sad about that.  He was really sweet, probably too nice to be a Porn Star.  I am told my my new companion that he does this from time to time so we will see if he gets in touch so that I can continue with that one.

I have to say grieving is not pleasant.  When it was my father I was working for the government, and I had a crew of very silly old ladies trying to tell me how to walk straight as I was trying to keep my mother from giving up the ghost entirely.

When it was my uncle my mother was even more upset, and I spent about a year feeding her on a variety of nutritious puddings to stop her from giving up

When it was my best friend, my family were particularly nasty and I had to fight to keep my mother out of care, which she would also have had to fund, so it is particularly funny that my family still object to my saving them ten years or so in care costs.

Now it has been my mother and I did not have to deal with her stupid children, along comes Little Shiva to stab me in the face.  Everybody I have met since she died has been unpleasant in one way or another.  Clearly the future is locking the door and throwing away the key.

Anyway, hopefully I will bag the Indian job, and then we can talk further about the possibilities in Dubai.  If I am doing a USA/India commute life will get far easier all round.

Ina

 

 

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The Systemic problem with the EU in the UK

So, from  the ongoing train of thought that I have had whilst cooking the first Boris story, I have come to the conclusion that I have a handle on the systemic problem in the UK that prevents half the population from being willing to tolerate the EU project.

Not that that is a bad thing necessarily, because I am of the opinion that running a permanent trade deficit is insanity and no quantity of hedge fund managers is going to resolve that for most of the population as long as the English keep voting Conservative.

We have an unusual situation in the UK, as it is four countries, not one.  It is, despite the varying history and the complication of the Orange Lodge, really at the present time an occupation.  If it weren’t for the Orange Lodge, in it’s various shades, Northern Ireland would probably not have a problem with uniting with Eire, and we would not have morons setting fire to the Saltire in George Square and threatening terrorist activity if Scotland finally grows a brain and digs the new Suez along the border.

Talking of which, I am thinking of celebrating my great grandfather’s achievement at the end of  January, so if any Nats would like to message me on that basis, they are welcome to do so.  Provided they aren’t stupid inverted snobs, of course.

So, quite apart from the issues of sovereignty, the unwillingness to be part of a super-state and the stupidity of running a constant deficit at the expense of the poor to benefit the Square Mile, the biggest issue preventing the (in my view) smarter half of the English population from wanting to be part of Europe is the fact that our foolish Westminster government and the funders thereof have encouraged the English to think of themselves as occupying forces with subordinate nations who are not entitled to an opinion.

This is the viewpoint that has brought us to the position we are in, fuelled enormously, of course, by David’s rather rash decision to give the English a referendum on Europe.

Both referenda were daft, however we now know that there is extremely healthy support for my favoured option of simply creating two islands  🙂  and we are now in the process of attempting a split from Europe, whether it suits the credit card wielders who want to go on holiday or not.

So, we have an entirely faux superiority complex in England, new confidence in the other countries, a government who desperately need some actual talent to pull it off, which they of course cannot admit to without losing their perception of power.

As someone who guided themselves through a fairly broad brush yet extensive international history of English trading, I fully understand and support their wish to do that, that is what they are good at.

The sooner we dig the trench, however the better since I forsee it actually coming to the point of them attempting to occupy us if we don’t just lubricate and persist in taking it.

The way I have been treated recently is a case in point.  I am now functioning at director level, and they still retreat into “I don’t understand what you are saying” even when it is written in black and white for them to review over and over again.

This is the last refuge of the rogue who does not want to help you on the basis of your imaginary inferiority.  It is, with the benefit of considerable experience, fairly easy to subvert, so as a tactic it is doomed to failure not only by the directors, but by the UK.

So, David Cameron, in my view, should go down in history as the man who opened the gaping wound in the UK, which will ultimately lead to the machine becoming obsolete without careful guidance and direction from someone better at pretending to care.

Yes, that is me flirting.

 

Lotsa love,

Ina

 

 

 

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Stupid People are Nasty

We finally seem to have gotten rid of Little Shiva.

It was around about the post to his wife this week.  I am not sure if he is actually so far gone that he had not previously noticed that she knew about the website in July.

She presumably lied to him.  People do, for all sorts of twisted reasons. He certainly never told her about it, her complaint in this regard is in the conversation we had.

I’m sure he was expecting to be rewarded by hoovering up me sounding confused, hurt and increasingly desperate because, after all, he did ensure that an already bad situation was made considerably worse, for no reason at all.

The sadist, I can imagine, regarded this as a form of ‘blooding’.  It appears from everything I have witnessed to do with the company involved, that this is how they spend their working day.

I can confirm that they certainly don’t spend it working.  The higher up the food chain in banking contracting, the less work you do and the more unpleasant you get to be.  I have hundreds of friends doing it, and taken as a collective, I have never seen so many posts complaining of mental illness and the stifling of their careers.

By all accounts, however, Little Shiva had done this before, several times that the people in the office had witnessed.  I am probably unusual in that the long term staff actually told me.

His wife seemed to think this was hilarious, to the point of being stupid enough to put it in writing.  So, as you can see, brains do not go with the stinking attitude you apparently require in this business.  She is a new graduate, with limited experience, so it is only when it is done to her that she will understand that this is not OK.

I however, have had people doing similar things to me for most of my life.  In fact, I am doing a job at the moment in which I have no reason to see or speak to anyone and apparently even producing anonymous work has attracted some unwanted attention.

You can take it from this that I am a magnet for people’s bile, and there seems to be no escape from it.  I don’t think that there is now an alternative to rising above it, since there is so much of it about.

The problem with being stupid and nasty, is that there is always a bigger, stupider and nastier person to take advantage of it, and if you suffer from these conditions, they inevitably will.

When I started on the contract, the first thing I noticed was that Little Shiva was being dumped with work nobody else wanted and belittled by his extremely small minded sadistic friend.  He made a series of blisteringly stupid assumptions about everybody in the office.  Somebody somewhere had told him that Africans were stupid, Indians were to be manipulated and women were to be bullied into whatever you wanted to do to them.

You would think that this would be noticed and this guy would be sent to the abattoir that such people usually work in, but no, not in contracting.  In contracting the man who creates the pivot table is apparently king, regardless of his ability to actually do the more important and expensive elements of the job.

This is about responsibility.  The people in charge of these contracts only understand the paperwork.  They do not understand about costings, people, training or anything else, and this is what the company needs to resolve.

As I have said, the previous contracting company that I worked with was not like this at all.  Why the company concerned has become so bloated and incompetent is a mystery, however I am now forced to deal with it, so perhaps we can encourage them to understand a bit about really quite basic business.

It is sad yet hilarious to think that these are the very people at the heart of the banking crisis.  There is a literal ocean of similar incompetence in the world of banking, all outstandingly well paid, if you can tolerate the waste.

So why is it that stupid people are nasty, in the form of taking your job, killing your mother, spending years of their time twisted up in their beds, getting off on thinking of ways of making your life more miserable?

Wolfe would say it is bad gut bacteria, but I would take that a step further to incorporate their love of self-indulgence.  They only think about themselves, and that is a stultifyingly boring thing to do.

 

 

 

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Why are men like this?

So today I had a ‘meeting’ with a bunch of people in town.

Not very interesting.

The guy who had been put in charge of this meeting was a drippy 50 something.  As we sat in the lobby waiting to go in he greeted everyone but me warmly.

Jesus, not again. I thought.

Sure enough he got to looking at the stuff we had been asked to bring, and immediately started insulting me.

Every time I opened my mouth he interrupted me, smiling continuously throughout.

I was the most qualified and experienced person there, including him.

Now, I do realise that this is the social equivalent of the dick pic, but it doesn’t make it any less tiresome, so let us get something very clear.

There is absolutely no reason why I should be interested, and I certainly don’t feel any compulsion to be interested, so why are you bothering to try and get my attention?

It is really sad that this is what passes for flirting.  I have no idea why we chose to give the gender most susceptible to the foibles of their genitals so much power, but really it is a screaming bore.

Life was much easier as a head chef.  I used to just point at things and get them to run towards them.

Now I am supposed to want to be liked.  I don’t give a shit if you like me, just get on with your boring paperwork and then leave me the fuck alone.

The first thing I learned as a manager was that power always carries the responsibility of taking care of people.

The second thing I learned  as a manager was not to care about being liked.

The third thing I learned was how to create a nice safe honest bubble for people to actually function in.  I see almost no office management that understands this.

I see people anxious to be liked, anxious to be feared, anxious to be remembered.  None of these things matter. Doing the job well and making people feel safe, that matters.  Your tiny penis anxiety doesn’t matter at all.

I am hoping to hear some positive news from India in the next few days, if so, I won’t have to deal with this crap any more.

 

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Today I Became a Consultant

So, today this lovely Indian author greeted me warmly on Facebook and asked me for some advice.

As a general know-it-all I was very pleased to be asked.  Three hours or so later, I am wondering if perhaps it is time I wrote something for actual money?

The dude has a publishing contract, but no marketing back up.  I wonder about the future of publishing if this is normal?  He is with a publisher I can only dream about attracting.

Anyway, I am only doing about a tenth of what I should be doing in terms of promotion, to begin with this was because I thought my writing was very outre and a bit shaky, now it is sheer laziness and the knowledge that the best thing I can do for myself is write something else rather than sit and worry about marketing.

You do need to have some awareness of the limitations of time, however, so perhaps it is time I wrote something for actual moolah, cash, kudos, etc.

This involves a lot of annoying extra tasks, mainly in the USA.  I object to sending my original documents to another country.

Anyway, it appears my strategy has paid off, if such people are asking me for advice and taking it, so I guess I should take this whole brand thing more seriously.

In which case it is time I finished the games for my beloved Wolfe and wrote the stuff for Boris.

Hopefully I will have some good news shortly.

Toodle pip,

Ina

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A Cute Post about Racism

I was confined to the house for several years, not only because my parents needed me, but because the family dysfunction was so aggressive that had I had any kind of normal life, everybody, including my parents would have been at risk from my sisters.

My brother was too selfish to notice, either that my parents might have liked to actually see their grandchildren, or that anything my sisters would do would be upsetting in any way.

In fact, his answer to both problems was to join in and validate their behaviour.  This is why absent children are nasty to carers – it is far easier to hate the person doing all the work than offer them any help of any kind.  It removes any need for acknowledgement of anything they would have had to give up, or any work that they are doing and you are not.  This means you are STILL ENTITLED, and negates any requirement for actually making a contribution of any kind.

During the time I was confined to the house, the only people I saw were my procession of exs, who would drop in when they felt like it.  I usually got them to assist in some job or other that required help – since I would not of course be getting any help from the scum family, despite their grubby little hands.  They were too busy rubbing them.

This is what respectable people do.  They bitch about anybody that actually does any work, and then they take anything they have from them, even when they have very effectively prevented them from having anything approaching a normal life.

At one point I was interviewed by the police to find out if I was actually in conditions of Modern Slavery, so intense was the delusion of one of my charmless relatives.

Anyway, since this post is about racism, I am sure my charming sisters, in particular, are horrified by the events surrounding Little Shiva. They will be delighted to learn that I am now spending some quality time with a rather sweet and equally shocked Muslim. He had assumed that I would write him off as a racist and not want to speak to him.

My exs will of course also be horrified.  I had to listen to many, many hours of vile ranting about our immigrant population from at least three exs.  What was fascinating to me, as a person who was at the time employed to deal with immigrant populations in terms of extracting information, was the astonishing lack of awareness that meant they did not seem to notice that they were saying these things to someone with no issues at all about race. I think they thought it would rub off eventually.  It clearly didn’t.

After the first hundred hours or so of listening to it, I was astonished to find myself questioning what was meant by the bile.  On face value, racism is abhorrent, of course, but the ranting conceals fear. Fear of the loss of status, fear of the loss of territory, fear of the unknown.  You cannot blame people, particularly people who have suffered loss, for being tribal.

You can however get annoyed with the colour related elements, but I think since a lot of newer immigrants to Scotland are actually Eastern European and therefore white, the colour-based racism has actually dissipated in favour of the fear of overcrowding and being sold somebody’s child.  Some of the most eager proponents of curbing immigration that I have interviewed are actually Hindu and Muslim.  They understand, apparently a whole lot better than the Scots do, that borders are relevant and precious.  Hindus in particular are often very right wing and not at all worried about saying so.

As I have mentioned in previous posts, racism has been studied quite extensively and has common elements which should be grasped before making assumptions that you ‘just hate’ somebody.  I am sure I am not the only person that finds they have more in common with other nations than I do with the English as a general rule.  This is, of course, partially due to the artificially generated tension that our lovely country likes to employ to keep the jocks in their place, but it is an odd concept.

Personally, when I lived in England, I found ignoring them helpful.

What you can get most irritated about is the lack of concern for the person next to you and the willingness to cause harm.  That is nothing to do with race, and everything to do with a mean spirit and grasping nature.  That is more likely to get you killed than anything to do with race.

 

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