Laughing Alone? Newest Newsletter!

 If you think it’s been a long time since I blogged, you should know that I went more than a year between newsletters! The newest can be found on the link on my sign-up-form page of my website. There’s the introductions to Dave, wedding pictures, my IQ test results, and much, much more.

Ya know what? Since I love you all so much, I’ll post the whole thing here. Pass the link to all your friends and change the world!

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Infrequent, Humorous Newsletter

Motto: Infrequent and humorous, but never infrequently humorous.

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November 2011 (Issue #13)

Yes, it’s been more than a year since our last issue, but there is HUGE breaking news, so stay tuned …

In this issue:  the aforementioned Breaking News, important photos, good food, and a few software tools to better your life.

If this is your first newsletter, you can view the archives on this page of my website.

Membership Update

Only two souls short of 1200 subscribers. (Or one soul with two email addresses.)

Remember, you can win the drawing for free autographed books for the life of my writing career OR a 4GB iPod Shuffle OR a Kindle Touch. Forward this on to all your friends and family, urging them to sign up now. Each subscriber and each referral gets another entry. Only 800 people to go before I give a big prize out again!

If you happen to have The Familiar Stranger on your Kindle, you may go to Kindlegraph.com and request my electronic signature and usual message.

Breaking News

Mere moments after question popped

A wonderful man named Dave Tarabochia stole Christina’s heart and asked for her hand in marriage. He took her to Chart House, overlooking the Willamette River. After they both ate a scrumptious meal, he made her close her eyes to guess how many boats lit the water. “You know I’m going to love you for the rest of my life, don’t you?” he murmured, and she opened her eyes to find a gorgeous ring winking at her from a velvety box in his hand. She said Yes, as she’s no dummy. The two love birds plan to marry–Wait! This happened way back in January. We interrupt this romantic account for …

More Breaking News

Christina and Dave married, blending their family of five children and moving to Tigard, Oregon. Christina and twelve-year-old Andrea returned from their mission trip to Mexico less than a week before the wedding, but things went amazingly well.

The whole family comprised the wedding party and built a seven-piece wooden statue during the ceremony as a symbol of the building of their new life on the foundation of the Lord.

Afterward, the guests boogied to love songs from the 50s and 60s until showering the couple with prayers before they departed for a US Virgin Islands honeymoon and–

What?! That was clear back in April? So it’s not really breaking news? Okay …

Trying this breaking news thing again

Um, I’m in a really, really yummy cookbook? Yeah, let’s go with that. Author Nicole O’Dell, the instigator, describes it as “a collaborative recipe book bringing your favorite Christian authors and their favorite foods together. Sixty-three of your favorite Christian authors have come together in this first-of-its-kind e-book, sharing more than 120 recipes that connect to their books or their characters.”

The best part of it all is that, as readers of the best newsletter in the world written at this very nanosecond, you can download this cookbook for FREE! Go to Nicole’s website, click Buy Now, and enter “christinaberry” in the discount code box. Easy as pie, which might be one of the recipes in there.

The Name Change

The Artist Formerly Known as Prince changed his name back to Prince because he knew he would really always be Prince in his fan’s minds. We’ve now changed our name from The Ashberry Lane Newsletter to The Infrequent, Humorous Newsletter, but we still know who we are.

There are two parts to this decision. The first part and the second part. Of the name.

See, the “Ash” came from Ashcraft and the “berry” came from … um, Berry. Sherrie is no longer writing parts of the newsletter–which I bet you could tell already by the decrease in quality–and Christina is no longer a Berry. Just please don’t think this is some kind of salty canned “meat” just because your email won’t say Ashberry Lane anymore.

What if you are only hanging around here in the first place because you love Sherrie, and who is this Christina girl anyway? Well, if that’s the case, hang around awhile longer. Sherrie’s busy being a totally cool women’s director at her church and writing meaningful, short non-fiction, yes, but–and this but isn’t very large as it’s been doing Zumba–she might reappear in any issue.

Now that we’ve got that out of the way I can stop referring to myself in the ubiquitous third person and let you in on a little secret: it’s just Christina now, folks. I am so, so sorry for you all.

More Name Stuff

Taken today!

Let’s go back to Prince … we have to deal with my name change now. I’m keeping christina [at] christinaberry [dot] net as my email because it’s easy for you all to remember, and everyone and his monkey is in my address book and folders. I’m submitting all new projects to editors as Christina Berry as well, as that’s how I am known in this industry and have spent almost a decade building my “brand” on that name. However, I am a Tarabochia through and through. What a blessing God brought me in Dave and I am proud to wear his unpronounceable name.

Try to say it. Tarabochia. Nope. It’s ter-uh-bach(more like the brilliant composer than the sound a chicken makes)-ee-uh. Ok, maybe some of you did get it right. If so, treat yourself to a piece of your kid’s Halloween candy that you’ve been hiding.

On the Book Front

This is probably the most exciting time possibility-wise right now since back when I signed my contract for The Familiar Stranger three years ago. Numerous houses have expressed interest in, and are currently reviewing, two different projects of mine. Even if rejections flow in from ALL of them, it’s still exciting, as I wrote the first chapter to yet another book last month. This new story of intrigue gives me an outlet to tell a foster care story, one of the passions of my heart.

The Familiar Stranger continues to sell slow and steady, with ebook numbers rising to a quarter of my total sales. Paperbacks can make a great Christmas gift, though. Especially if an author will 1) sign to whomever you want, 2) gift wrap it, and 3) ship it anywhere in the Continental United States for only $14.50 like I will. 🙂 Email me if you’d like to take advantage of this opportunity!

Also, people keep reading the book, which makes sense, since people are still buying them. On Monday I’ll be visiting an assisted living facility and discussing my book with a group of senior citizens that have been reading it over the last few months. Even they admit that the length of time between reading and meeting might make the discussion a little vague, but there will be coffee and cookies, so we’ll all be happy. Remember that where five or more gather to discuss The Familiar Stranger, I will be present in person or via phone. That is, if you ask me to. I won’t randomly stalk book clubs or anything.

Odds & Ends

~When my kids call me loudly, it tends to wake me up, but when a nap loudly calls my name … ZZZZ. Ironic, isn’t it?

~My son recently had testing done to participate in a longitudinal study at Oregon Health & Sciences University. What I didn’t realize was that they would be running IQ-testing-ish questions on me as well. I was given “remorse” to define.

“Regret.”

“Can you expand on that?”

“Uh, wishing to undo something … or when Morse code doesn’t work the first time ’round and has to be re-sent.”

Not sure what that did for my IQ right there.

A Few of My Favorite Things

~I drool over Macs, I really do, but it doesn’t look like I’ll be buying one anytime soon. A computer guy my sweet honey (that would be Dave, in case you missed the breaking news) has used in the past set all our PCs up with two things that make it run much faster. CCleaner.com and Auslogics Disk Defrag. These programs seem to work better than any that are preinstalled for cleaning up and organizing the computer. Try them at your own risk, but I’ve been very happy with the improved performance of my PCs.

My cleaning sickness extends so far that I enjoy watching the defrag work and clean up all those nasty red dots on the screen.

~Dropbox. It’s my new best friend. It’s as if I have a personal assistant scurrying around making sure all my PCs have the same up-to-date version of files, that my pictures and video are accessible everywhere, and that my editing clients can see their latest edits in a shared folder immediately without worrying about downloading. It doesn’t bring me coffee, but I don’t drink coffee, so we’re still a good fit. No more worrying if I’m using the old chapter or the chapter I changed last week. No more stopping mid blog or mid email so I can switch to a different computer to find the right attachment. No more stress.

And when I can finally afford a Mac, all my stuff–every file and every pic–can be downloaded to the new computer at one time with a few clicks of the mouse.

But my favorite thing of all this time of year is Veteran’s Day. And not just because we get the day off school. Last night I was able to take the four younger kids to hear Les and Eva Aigner share how they survived Kristallnacht 73 years ago, and how veterans are their heroes as their lives were saved by our armed forces. A heartfelt thank you to all you amazing veterans!

Where to Find Me

You might find it hard to believe that I blog almost every day. Evidence to support your disbelief could be found at my blog, where there are hardly any entries since the breaking news began. This is because I’m having trouble getting all the blog posts I write in my head while driving or exercising actually ONTO the computer. But rest assured that I draft many a mental blog. I’m looking forward to more of a set writing schedule next year when my youngest is in a school class that seems to last more than twenty minutes. Still, I think you might find my frantically funny road rage episode a worthy read. Also, my Novocaine-fueled author reading is racking up a few views on youtube and making my ston(short for step-son) very proud of his “famous” stom.

You can find me on Facebook and follow me on Twitter. My daughter asked why I text random stuff to Twitter. “Why, honey, that’s what it’s there for!”

Get Me Outta Here

If you don’t want to be bothered with any other works of genius from Christina (Berry) Tarabochia, please click the “Unsubscribe” link at the bottom of this email and, after much wailing and gnashing of teeth, I will remove your name. Wait, that’s what I did before I found the great service of Your Mailing List Provider. Now they do it immediately and then I gnash my teeth.