I knew that blogging would lead me to other writing projects, and it has. Today, I was interviewed on Love My Kindle.
Below is part of the interview. Go to http://www.lovemykindle.com/love-these-interviews/interview-with-author-lizbeth-meredith for the whole read.
Interview with author Lizbeth Meredith
Greetings Lizbeth and welcome to Love My Kindle. We’d love for you to tell us a little about yourself. I’m a probation officer living in Alaska. I am the mother of two grown daughters that I raised by myself as their sole supporter, and as soon as they were grown, I began tending to the things I love: writing, reading, and budget solo travel. Now I blog at lameredith.com and am a contributor to A Girl’s Guide to Travelling Aloneby Gemma Thompson (on Amazon, too!). What inspired you to take up writing? (Was it something you always wanted to do or did it creep up on you at some point?) As a young child, I began writing poems, usually about me and my imagined death on my tire swing. I gave up writing when I survived the tire swing (probably fifth grade), picking it up again when I found myself traveling the globe to rescue my kidnapped daughters when I was barely off food stamps and still in my twenties. Is there a particular author or book that influenced you as a child or an adult? I love reading memoirs of everyday people. I also enjoy fiction by Sherman Alexie and Elizabeth McCracken. Speaking of books, what are you reading now? Currently, I’m reading Family Furnishings by Alice Munro, Flip Flops After 50, by Cindy Eastman, and I’m re-reading The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls. Time to dish. We’d love to hear about your book. Give us the skinny on what sparked the idea for this book and what it’s about. I decided to write Online Safety: Get Ready, Get Set, Let’s Go after requests by friends and even a local romance writer’s group on tips about how to be protected from online scammers and violent people when dating online. I’d already written about related topics like domestic violence a good bit, but this is different. Different and the same. Men can be victims easily of online dating ploys, and for both genders, being in the write space before embarking is important, so I wrote this bite-sized book that costs less than a cup of coffee. What project are you working on now? I’ve nearly completed my re-write of my novel Facing the Odds, One Man at a Time about a middle-aged single mother’s journey to find her perfect match, only to conclude her energies are best spent becoming the woman of her dreams. I continue to plug away at my memoir about recovering my kidnapped children with the help of a developmental editor. You know what time it is! Tell us where your book is available and how readers can connect with you. My book is available on Amazon here. Here’s my Amazon author page. |
SO, my venture on Match last spring didn’t produce a love match, but it did produce a mini-book and a few new friends, and a few blog posts like the one below. Not too shabby, I’d say!
Thank you to the staff at Love My Kindle, and thanks for reading faithfully.
I keep plugging along in my efforts to get out of the house and mix it up a bit with Match.com.
Partly driven by my hope I will meet someone I adore, and mostly driven by my need to get new stories for my novel, I’ve made a firm commitment to have twenty different coffee dates by summer’s end.
One of my favorite moments in every online date is when the hour is wrapping up, and I ask him to tell me about his worst online dating experience so far. (This will become significantly less enjoyable once my date mentions that it’s been his time with me, but so far, so good.)
This weekend’s coffee date was a pleasant-looking Lutheran construction worker who had sole custody of his four children, ages 7 and up. He told me he’d recently injured his heel and had surgery, and his online date met him at a restaurant/bar soon after he was ok’d to drive again.
She told him that she was a social worker, and chatted him up easily. She’s enjoyed an adult beverage or more before his arrival, and within the first half hour, she planned their future together out loud told him she’d hold off meeting his kids for the first month. He said he was terrified. “My son needs a ride to soccer soon,” he told her, excusing himself early from the date.
“Do you need help driving, with your foot and all?” she asked sweetly, looking down at his cast.
“Nope. Thanks. I’m good. “ He said he gave her a quick hug goodbye and left, fast as he could. He’d driven his company car to the date, and as he was about to get in, he felt someone approach him from behind.
It was her. She put a hand in each of his pockets with her cheek resting on his back. “Need help finding your keys?” She rooted around in a grabby manner that told him she was not actually looking for his keys.
The following Monday, his dreadful date called him at work. She’d made note of the phone number on the company vehicle, and continued to ring him for a week or more afterwards.
What can be learned by such a dating disaster?
- Dating isn’t just risky for women.
Mr. X said he didn’t realize until returning home that his hands were shaking. It was scary. Had the situation happened to me, I’d be mortified.
- Coffee is a better bet for the first date when meeting a stranger. Less of a financial commitment, and coffee or tea never blurs judgment.
- It’s helpful to park your vehicle away from line of sight when going on a first online date. Though it doesn’t happen often, your new friend can track your address from your driver’s plate number.
I cannot tell a lie; I enjoy the stories I hear of dates gone wrong much more than dating successes. But they’re also why I tell anyone who will listen to exercise universal precautions. It’s better to plan for safety unnecessarily than it is to be caught unprepared.
Do you have an online dating story you’d like to share? Email me at Liza8m@gmail.com.
Have a great week.