Can I take your seat please? I'm Khaled As-Sahima. God is good. And all the time, let's move on to the Johnson. First, I just wish to acknowledge the leadership, the leadership of our church. Pastor Muñoomwe, Pastor Muñoomwe, all of our leaders. Thank you for being available. Thank you, to our people in this church, through the church. I want to acknowledge the presence of the many members of the parliament, our mayor, all the city leaders, and truly many. I want to acknowledge the farmers, my fellow farmers, for feeding the nation. The family population hasn't failed. Muñoomwe, the message you gave us, wonderful message from Blam. Part of our demonstration of Blam is to take care of our families, is to make sure our families have eaten. So thank you to the farmers. Many years back, farming was seen as a less sad activity, debtier activity. Your government today is sending the message in a different way. Flipping the message, saying the call of the fund amongst obviously leaving the way is the spirituality, godliness, following trusted ways. No question about it. And I want to encourage the citizens of Blam, even pastors, that produce something. Even poor members produce something. When the family produces something for itself and then exists for those that can't farm, because there are some who can't, but they will do other things. The nation will be sad. Those who can't farm, who can't produce food, do something else. This church, when the church is looking for a cafe to be there, do something. Yes, that the past, the country was flipping over. Getting to a point where I said it yesterday that the Zambians wanted to leave a good life, but they don't want to wait. How is it possible? I asked myself, I mean, I'm Jesus. Man, man, man, I'm a man. How is it that people want to leave a higher standard of living, but they don't want to wait? All they are doing is tick tock, tick tock. Social media, insiders, disrespect. Look at the message when you say today, fronting love. Past the present monument and the team and our church and the Board of Trustees of all, we would like this country to tilt and veer back to what is normal, to bring back normalcy to the country. What was up normal was beginning to look normal and what is normal is now being frowned upon. Please continue preaching. The message we got today, my name, Chamoaz Zamoaz, Salonga Milana, but we say we in the Lovale group, Chamoaz, Zambiwechwa Muiola Dupashima. I was seated here and said, what do I say to this beautiful group? I chose to focus on these few words. Gold, my head has seen his own image. He himself does want us to emulate him as we love each other. We must also work hard. Himbo, I was clear, those who don't want to work must also not eat. And I think it's the literal meaning of that. Bible exudes parables, but this one is the literal meaning. Self-control, excessive of anything is very fact. And you know energy to do what is right for society. It's my message. 2023 is gone, tomorrow is the last day. So we look to 2024, to enter 2024 with the right attitude, right mindset. Supporting each other who can be a better preacher than the one who delivered the message today. Wonderful message. Start the year, the new year with a positive mind, helping hands. We are all beneficiaries of someone's health along the way, with an attitude for the young people to achieve in the right way, not shortcuts. I want to wish the church work, our church work. The reorganization, Pastor Monion where you announced today, welcome, truly welcome. We want to congratulate the new officers. Pastor Monion, congratulations and your team, together with your team. And the other team. I'm 7-0-1-2. As we go to 1-2, at Mubere-Girileza, as we can support our leadership, as the communities need to support each other, we as the servants, the servants that you chose to work for them, for me as Chief Servants, we will do our best, not just our best, our very best to serve this country, which we inherited in a great difficulty and we've dedicated 2024 to opening up the economy, agriculture, whatever it brings. We want to waterhouse, we want to dance so we can irrigate, so we can feed our people. Agriculture credits, all of those issues. This has continued, but agriculture credit at a lower cost, even civil servants. As you heard, we've closed the very difficult transactions in the year. That's why it came slightly late. I was meant to have come a week earlier in Germany, but I stayed back to conclude the transaction on cashier in the mines. It's done now. Mofani mine is done now. Wansha mine is done now. So the copper belt can return to life. All these challenges we inherited, but through God's love, God's just kindness on us. We are these vessels who do our best. We are aware of the challenges people face, but we are scored to give us wisdom, as he gave wisdom, Solomon of the Horses. So we are scored for his wisdom, to give us good health. All of us, we should work for them. We want to see a better country, better than how we found it. Thank you to the choirs. First time moving here was post-challenge, that Thomas Central choir is better. He was post-challenge. Monde, choir, basically. That's the movie we were saying, my choir is better. But for me, I said, thank you to all the choirs. I'm not competing with him. I know why he's saying that. He also knows why I'm saying that. I already thanked our brother, the message he delivered. Wonderful message. Extremely wonderful message. And parallel message. What a message as you end this. Great. And we heard you loud and clear, man. To ambo man. Loud and clear. It's our duty to pass this message to others, but first to internalize it ourselves. To ask for that I want to be the first one. One of the first. Ladies and gentlemen, God bless you all. As I made a small request to the church, if a pastor moving me has agreed, I would like us to follow the message that has been preached today of love. So we sing the song as a church to get love at home. Oh, my God, we're from Egypt. So the church could lead us. Thank you very much. We just want to appreciate your coming as a church. A small token of appreciation for your coming. I will invite the people that are going to do that to please come forward. Mr. President, Mr. President sir. I'm very happy as the Chokha Central Church Mission District to have you around to worship with us. We appreciate you and your family. And for us to appreciate you and to show our happiness, we are presenting to you this holy Bible, which is a family Bible. This rare Bible was in homes, but we need to have them in our homes. Your family worship. Dear President, please have this Bible for your family. Thank you so much.


For every action to happen there is this first need to have an intellectual understanding and there is a sense of urgency So I'm addressing this question from a larger context not just planning trees. How to have a persistent sense of urgency now The planting trees thing came up Essentially because we wanted to save the soil of Tamil Nadu. We were not thinking of saving the world Because the soil is getting destroyed so rapidly Once you destroy the soil It doesn't matter what you do what your intentions may be you're willing to do Put the whole economy of the nation into planting trees. It's not going to work So saving the soil was our most important person concerned That's why we went to the farmers and told them to bring in a certain amount of trees into their farm about once spreading awareness and Identity identity is not an issue because in this country Particularly in this culture. There is a very strong identification with the land still 70% of the population is in agricultural activity and Even those people who are in the city they spend still at least I would say 10% or 15% of the urban population in the country still goes back to their village roots At least for a short period of time in a year. So they still have that agro connection Probably in in larger I mean in other countries in the world Most of them will never go back to the village But here they still go back because their relatives are in the village half the families in the village So they have that identity with the land. We have to exploit that identity now We have to make that identity grow in them that your identification Fundamentally ease with the land because what you call as myself this very body is a piece of this planet So this is this is the identification which we brought up out with project green hands When I just this one thing just fired up millions of people when I told them See what you exhale is the trees inhalation what the trees exhale is your inhalation What does that mean? That means half your lungs is hanging out there It's not a tree is one part of your lung When they when they saw something so simple. Yes, it's true. I cannot breathe with these lungs unless that lung is breathing So that is my extended lung So protecting that becomes natural So this identification is already there. We have to enhance it and strengthen it particularly in the younger generation We're going to be active in the next 25 years We have to strengthen this identification People are identified with their caste creed religion nationality all this is fine But the most fundamental identity is you are a piece of this planet You're very body that you carry is a piece of this planet and half your lungs is hanging out there on the tree I wanted to feel it Not just think it's a great idea. It's not an idea. It is a reality that we're living, isn't it? This reality has to sink into people. You don't have to talk about identifying themselves with the tree If if you sit in front of a tree or under a tree and breathe Consciously, you know, there's a big difference There's a big difference sitting in the building and breathing sitting under a tree and breathing There is a big difference one can feel it. I want people to feel it But they're not enough trees for all of us to sit under We need to plant them. I would like to especially acknowledge Jack Ivoroshe 50 million trees in the next three Her company is doing seven thousand megawatts of power from just I want you to see them not as people I want you to see them as solutions for the future They are the solutions for the future. What we need to do is Right now. They're just two sitting here. We need to do Multiplication we need to increase their numbers We need to increase their numbers means they must be recognized people should know that people are making this contribution I wanted to talk about it a French man is coming to Tamil Nadu on planting 15 million trees in Tamil Nadu I want you to talk about it. It's very important that we constantly talk about solutions The important thing is that everybody talks about it That everybody doesn't drop their hands everybody says yes, there's a solution people are working for it What can I do? What can I do will naturally come when you see people who create solutions are recognized in the world Definitely more people will look for solutions. That's what we need to do. Thank you very much If drastic measures aren't taken soon by the time I grow up, there won't be any fish left in the sea Rain forests and clean air will be a thing of the past Polar ice caps will be gone Oceans will rise and entire countries will disappear Life will change in ways. You can't even imagine There could be famine Worldwide epidemics life expectancy will be lowered. We are not just talking about the future We are talking about my future


And just as said, our authors, similar to your day, will be discussing, especially me, and how it is in fact to use the tool for authors and artists, and really anyone who is a creative person who wants to get their writing, or our work, out to people, and also do co-created profit, and I think everybody's interested in that as well, and they want to do our endeavors to some degree. So while we introduce you to everybody, and Sarah and I are starting to discuss it, we will be sure to open up questions from your point of view. And what we're going to do is, starting over here, we have Keith Ronson, Keith Ronson's head artist, painter, illustrator, and graphic novelist. He is the author and illustrator of the Day Black series, and his diverse past as individual, who has met with Kathleen Harler, are a big part of why he began the Day Black series and next we have Tobias Buckel. He is a New York Times specialing writer, born in the Caribbean. He grew up in Granada and spent time in the British and U.S. Virgin Islands, and upbringing was influenced as much as his work. His Xenowhealt series, along with other standalone novels, and over 60 stories, have been translated into different languages. The nominated for awards is Hugo Nebula, Camus, and the John W. Campbell, who works for Best New Science Picture Nobler. And next we have Artezana Henry. Artezana is the author of Under Tide, the first book in the Innsmouth Legacy series. He proves this is the second book in the series, and will leave this month. She co-writes for short on coms and lovecraft free reads, and writes short stories about religions and aliens, and psycho-loonboosting, I really want to know more about. Last but certainly not least is Edward Warren. Edward Warren is a reader, writer, and YouTube content creator, who has worked in every facet of the publishing industry, and editing to come to mind, or I can be present, and will pass this to you. If you're a writer professional since 2011, and a poster is a novel, I'm betting it will always be about August G. Brown. Now, I'm sure you'll have to hear from our authors who are not for me any longer, so. I would like to ask the general question. When you think about social media, what is it you see as, is more expected use for you as a creative person? For me, especially as an indie author, it is my customer service go-to. If I have any questions about which of my books should somebody read first, which of my books is good for certain age groups, is there, you know, that's... What I think of when I think of social media for an author is letting you connect with the people that you normally wouldn't connect with. Especially, you know, let's say 10 years ago, there wouldn't have been as prevalent or as easy to connect with people. I use it specifically for customer service, whether it be any, of course, interacting, fan interaction, but if there's something wrong with one of my books, let's say, like Format and Broken or something like this, it's the easiest way for them to contact me. Whether it be DMs, or I don't, what I don't use it for is promotion. When I use social media, I use social media as just an everyday person. I post my likes, dislikes, things like that. But when it comes to how I interact with people on a day-to-day basis, it's usually about the books themselves and if I can help them, point them in the right direction, or let them contact me and maybe build more relationships than just a fan and author relationship. You can build, it's the best way to keep a readership. Getting a reader isn't hard. Keeping a reader is a more difficult aspect. It's a long time between books for most of us. It's, for me, a good way both to try and stay in people's minds as person who writes the sort of things that I write, and it's also, for me, a good way to keep myself motivated to hear from fans and people who are interested in the sort of things that I do. I'm someone who likes fast, regular feedback, which is sort of an awkward thing for an author, and it means that, I get at least a little bit of that. When I first started working on Winter Tide, which is a little sequel to a novel that I've had off on tour.com, and otherwise it was going to be probably a couple of years after the novel, everyone would say, hey, we'd like to see a book about this. And actually having a book, that's why I ended up starting Lovecraft with you, so that in the intervening two years, people would not forget that as a person who wrote about Lovecraft and requested that, it also gave me the excuse to do some gluttony search in a place where I would have to go home. I'm an extrovert, so I just like chatting with people everywhere, and the enjoyable thing about social media for me is not by self, to particularly say, I am going to monetize this media and get lots of people to follow me on it and sell them my books. I signed up for Twitter because a bunch of people I really enjoyed BSing with on Twitter, and we just started slinging stuff back and forth. I have a little bit of a reputation for having a large social media profile, but it's not that large, and it's just that I'm available there, and I like to challenge people. I find it really useful in terms of why I do the occasional sort of crowdfunding project that's away from the sort of traditional publishing New York project that I do. It's nice to have a kind of a base launch problem that usually serves me really well to drop the word on Twitter that I'm launching a new project and you'll really find it. But to be honest, I think it's a place where I go to sort of be genuine and be myself, hang out, and then learn from other people's perspectives and follow people. I wouldn't normally have the ability to access some real life and see what they're talking about, thinking about doing it.  Okay, yeah. Well, I like to buy as I'm an introvert. So I find it really awkward usually to talk about myself or to really promote myself or other things that I'm embarrassed in and talk about myself, but yeah, it's great. But on social media, and as you all know, people on social media a lot of times say stuff that they would want me to say in front of someone else. You get a lot more courage and you get a lot more open to say my name to anybody on the keyboard. So on a positive note, as far as my book goes, that's been a asset for me because I've made a really safe name that I'm kind of just looking safe to somebody because I'm not really, you know, but I'm starting to get better at that because with events like this, I kind of have to deal with it. But on a spring point of that, and for me, we did my proposal to social media and posted my artwork every day and those likes, you know, sometimes the likes are really superficial. People see them out so heavily, but they're also very motivational for artists and for writers. But you give them media gratification of somebody likes what you're doing, which post a million terms and so you were really doing the book for the fans and not so much for yourself. And as far as I'll be after you, but when we say I'll just come out out of it, it turns out it's not going to be me and it turns out it's not going to be them. And that's definitely a social media and that's really effective. I would just say that there has been a learning curve in social media because I believe that one of those things seems like people realize that this is going to be suddenly going to be something that is very much a viable way of finding readers often to people, which at the same time, as you were saying, sometimes people will say things on social media that would never stay in front of other people, which I believe is what happens when you're building up spring and not what you want to say, so could y'all speak to anything you've learned personally from having used social media? I learned how to read people without inflection. It's really hard to take what a person says on social media because you don't have, there's no sarcasm in the font. So you have to learn to, that was my main thing, I had to learn how to read people that would say something that maybe is sarcastic, maybe isn't. And a lot of that, that's what emojis are for. So I had to learn and not every emoji is the same on every device, so some emoji will go one way. Like one smile could be a kissy face on another one, you have to be careful in that aspect also. But I think that's one of the things that was a huge learning curve for me, people would joke with me and I would take them seriously. I was like, whoa, chill out. Oh, we were kidding. Well, I wish we had a sarcastic, you know, sarcasm font. I think that's the biggest problem for me was learning how to take people. I have a little one to get off of because you can go back and write it. No, it's very rewarding in the moment and when it's not rewarding in the moment it's, you know, Twitter is a very anxiety producing platform. You might miss something that's in the next scroll down and see what happens. And there's some huge thing that has blown up that everyone has said about it. You want to see what happens and you have that. And then you put it away and that's doing the actual important author stuff that is behind the social media. So, yeah, that speaks to the dark side of social media, so to speak, which is really interesting. There are two aspects of it that I think are something that are really interesting to have. One is that, which is continuous partial interruption. And in this damage with notifications, e-mail, dating, whenever it comes in, all that stuff. You have to be very careful about managing that. I run into a lot of people who are really bad at managing that. I mean, so I've been managing continuous partial interruption since I was four or five years old. So everyone else, welcome to my world. Thank you. So you have to, you have to have built yourself some very, from I find some very specific sort of guidelines about how to use this tool. Because like many other tools, it can be useful as a butter knife, it can also stab people with it.  It can't read just one. Because it's continuously refreshing, right?  It's really addictive. And that has to be managed if you want to get the actual writing time. And so I'm, you know, actually I actually have the iOS beta installed. And these limitations are, it shows you how much social media you personally, other than to use all of that nice graph form is coming out this fall for your phone. But it's very interesting to actually see how many times you picked up and looked at your phone. Like, you know, hey, you picked up and looked at your phone 120 times today. Just like, what do you know? Right? Really? That many times? Yeah. I don't know how many times I know I've ever had social media as your friend. But then the other aspect is that one, you have this really unique thing. It used to be where if you were a columnist you would post a column and everyone would read it. And some of the responses would come back to you, but not that many. So you had a kind of one-to-many relationship. And now with Twitter you have that where you can broadcast to a lot of people. You get retweets and lights that propel it into other people's feeds and something you can write to have as velocity. But also any of those people can respond right back to you. And so it's really hard for a lot of people because we're just learning how to deal with this for the first time in a content creation history is the fact that you can post something and get thousands of responses back from someone if you happen to trigger a nerve or it goes viral. And managing that requires you to have to use a whole new set of tools as a creator that we're just now starting to get used to. Unless you were previously sort of a very, very top of the game. There's some authors or artists who get hundreds of thousands of letters every day. But then at that point they would be rich enough to have, if you remain that kind of people who can filter that but for you, none of us have that. I don't have a staff that filters horrible Twitter replies. It's like a post something that goes viral. Every time I pick this up I tweeted something just a thought earlier in the day about something. If I pick up my Twitter feed and look at it and it says 150 replies I always just feel this sort of stinker closing the moment.  You can't concentrate on your writing. Right. And you have to deal with that. It's kind of like the negative side of it. Yeah. Okay. Well, to me personally I had to definitely learn about the losing engagement when dealing with people in social media because I definitely started of course an image as a public in a very early stage and just with my own Facebook friend before I was even doing this professionally when they started to pick up a stage and people were going with me right on the journey where they were doing this but then the thing happens where people start to feel invested in their needs to tell you it's like you're very accessible to these people so they have an urge or a need or a want to tell you how they think it should go. I even had a guy who sent me a copy back notes it that he made notes on any page or what he called it. It was bad we called it good. I was like man this is but you can't listen to it you can't listen to any of it and you kind of have to alienate people and I still am getting used to that because it's still people that have supported me but I guess because of social media and I build a social media relationship with them before this happened I feel it's weird. I feel I'm getting to listen to them but I know I can't let there be anybody everybody's going to hate what you do everybody's going to love it you're never going to be able to do anything with social media so for me that would be a curve I get to listen to at the end of the day it's your work basically if somebody has a problem with it at the end of the day you have to be proud of it if you're not happy with it and the horror part is to not saying hey the horror part is I'm trying to be difficult back without losing a reader because now you've been talking to people face to face, not face to face but you can really have a conversation with these people I guess I could not engage with them but I think the fact that I have been and people have seen my story and my journey is one of the things I have lived through in my success you know that's why I've gotten useful feedback after some of the most rewarding social media interactions I've had so it distracts me from writing but sometimes I use it to get over so this one point where I was writing my latest book where I decided to put myself into a corner and I had to get to know this what do I do and I I posted on social media and I said okay you're in football as a person and you need to get through New York ads it's a bit of a role to play in what you do and I got all sorts of fun replies and a couple of things that I actually kind of adapted into the way I got out of the scene and then it was it was mostly the audience for people who did that and then here I am I do a reader and one of the updates back to members and it was a nice little back and forth with readers that you were doing I wanted to touch on something that was brought up that is talking about the time cutting into the writing time I think you can talk about it also when I'm writing or I have a set schedule every day I go out and I write and that's all I do I turn off notifications I turn off my internet I turn off everything and that's the only thing I'm doing during that time is writing so I'm out here I don't have a problem not using social media during that time because I have a set time that I can use social media at a set time but I'm writing and those never the 20 show me the thing I need to do just totally subjectively but yeah a lot of my readers who find the success of balancing them end up having to turn everything off like that if I don't if nothing will get done with me if I don't turn it off if I don't turn it off then nothing will get done so I have to force myself to turn everything off yep yeah I don't really think the most interesting thing I've ever heard from Donald Trump today was he had a laptop and he actually I believe it was gone in blue the side he got valid where the wife I was you know that way he'll stop and even talk to him getting the internet I had this existential dread dropbox because I've had a couple of hard drive crashes if I don't see that little spinning dropbox icon I just don't feel like I'm having safe writing I do all my rubs they're done written so hand written so I don't have that problem but I can see how that would be nerve wracking I can't imagine like when I'm finally typing it up if it doesn't say mine is one note I think it is it's Microsoft version of the dropbox and if I don't see that little swirly thing I feel I'm the same way like all this work well I have it backed up on hard copy but I can't imagine looming my whole big chunk of something that's one of the reasons why all my wallets are hand written a question I do want to ask all of you touch a little bit on it in the past obviously a lot of writers will talk about what you do and don't do when it comes to critical reviews people don't read them and there's people who read them because they're feeling certain that's obviously an issue we now live in a time where there's things called reader reviews and there are facts more you know, it's a lot more of them than ever and what I was wondering is do y'all pay attention to things like anti-colon reviews or good read reviews and how if you do so how do you engage is it a positive or is it a negative relationship I'm a bit hungry to read everything because there's not so much out there I can't find it there's not so much but I just realized that we live in a time where everybody as everybody you do you would think your favorite would be like Indiana Jones you think that's the perfect movie but today if it came out today they would feel like oh that movie sucks they would pick the part where back in the day you just knew that was the flawless movie when you think about that and I keep that in mind when I'm reading reviews if I read something that somebody said they didn't like it or everybody it's always been like that but now everybody has to say it you realize that you really probably will really understand and know everybody's mind about it I want to touch on something on that topic real quick one of the best pieces of advice I first found when I first started this career was if you ever get a negative review and it hurts your feelings you need to go over to Amazon or Goodreads or wherever you need to find your favorite book and you need to go read the one star reviews of that book and that way you know that nothing is going to be for everyone and if people find something wrong with your favorite book that you think is the best thing in the face of the planning then of course they're going to find something wrong with yours so never ever take the first one I just want to fill it out I try to read the reviews when I feel like emotion is really is the good one I just want to read the reviews stuff like Goodreads or Amazon and how many I have because especially on Amazon it makes a difference if you see a book you like and it is kind of getting up there towards a few reviews but it's not there yet review reviews that make a huge difference in the promotions they do or just the giveaways just how visible it is on the site and a couple of times I've gone okay I'm getting close and I let people know and last time I gave a comment the person who did the reviews do you have 15 reviews that look so good yeah yeah so dude how do I deal with and engage with reviews there there are enough of them out there I don't follow all of them I read somewhere that a human mind engages with negative critical point sometimes more emotional intensity than a positive social mind so you always have to pay attention to that that ratio you can get like eight great positive reviews one negative and you basically feel as if the whole project is about to be washed so you have to be really careful about how you let that affect you I wanted to have a friend who is an expert type of programmer and I wanted him to grab Goodread's ADI create a little script that would just pull out the five star reviews and put them in like a little mini computer like a Raspberry Pi slap on the back of the monitor and put it in my office you know a little five star review when I went down there to start my day out for it I thought that would be a great idea you know as if I'm not ego-stricken but I just thought that would be a terrific way to have a more positive relationship with reviews because of the way your brain actually works that being said some of the one star reviews are my favorite because you get a real sense for whether you want that reader or not quite often there that there was a charity event I did where I recorded myself reading one of my one star reviews and some of them were just really tremendously fun because you get the sense of that person should never even come home with my book they should have been quite clear about the cover and the back-mounted material that they weren't going to enjoy it and my editor and I had a running bet on one star reviewer he used to leave a one star review for every single one of my son-of-all books all four of them he hated all four of them so he wanted to give one star but the second one and by the third one my editor was like you think he kind of picked up on the fact that he doesn't enjoy reading you and I was like man I would love to have just thousands and thousands of people like him by the book hate all he wants most of the reviews don't bother me much but usually there are people you can tell they were on the right match but you used to have reviews driving crazy how about you? you felt mad about the book you felt mad but you felt mad enough to write something? I agree that was the worst I read every single review I go and actively hunt them down for a couple different reasons the first reason is I use reviews as I know I have data readers I have content so my books go through that process but you get to feel like you get a feel for your readership you get a feel for what they like what they don't like, what you need to do more of what you're doing wrong I take those things to heart what I don't take to heart are the negative reviews to say they're stars so but I also don't take to heart a five star review that says they're stars are awesome those two things weigh the same amount to me and I'm preparing the three star reviews I want a strong reaction out of my reader I want to make you really happy or extremely mad one of those two things I don't want something in the middle I get a lot of negative comments about the content of my book because I'm a horror author.  But you get to know what people are looking for. Another thing is I feel, and this is even, I have a stronger opinion about this one, is I feel like I owe people the time that they spent money on me when they bought my book. I feel almost obligated to go check out whether or not I make this person happy. It's kind of like going back to talking about social media, they use this customer service. It's the same thing with reading the reviews. I want to know, hey, did I make this person happy? Did they get their money's worth out of my book? But look, that's basically the thing that matters the most to me is that I left an impression with somebody. Whether it be good, bad, love, like the indifference of the three stars, but I want to know what kind of impression, so I read them all. I do not respond to any of them. I would say that, I think we all agree, you do not respond to negative reviews. And I go as far as, I won't even think, I won't thank them for reading the book because sometimes that can be taken, like I said, there's no sarcasm on it so people don't know whether or not you're being honest and, you know, you don't know. So I don't reply at all on any of my reviews whether it be five stars or one star, doesn't matter, I don't say anything. Now I'll share them, I share them all over the place. You know, Twitter, YouTube, all over the place. But I won't respond. I want to know, yes. I know there's a trend going on in the way from Facebook and Twitter on Instagram. There's an author I follow who announced he's closing his Facebook, he showed me on Twitter and he just said, go on Instagram. I think people say, Facebook for old people and Instagram for young people. And I kind of noticed that kind of thing. I don't know if y'all noticed that at all. Yeah, just for young people, but it's trash for people to say it on Twitter or Facebook. Instagram is great for the author that has pretty covers. If you can find people, if you can find people that have a huge following, that you know you have a great cover and you want to send that person a book, that's a great way to sell books, is to get an Instagram person to, now I take crappy photos, I don't know about you guys, but I take terrible photos. So I don't use it for that, but I do use it, I follow it, I send a book to somebody with a huge following and hopefully they take pictures of it. And then as soon as they take it, I can go over to create space and watch the sales come in if you take the right person. So I don't, but I go. As far as the, I think everybody's leaving Facebook. I think Facebook is not the happiest place on earth right now with all the privacy stuff. So I'm seeing a lot of people escaping Facebook and we're going over to Twitter and Instagram, but I'm not noticing the age difference. So I don't know about that. So the dilemma with Facebook is that if you have a personal page, what you broadcast will go out to more or less all your followers depending on what the algorithm decides at Facebook. But you're capped at 5,000 people on personal account. So if you have 1 in 5,000 potential followers, you then have to use a Facebook page. Facebook page has unlimited number of followers which you can use to advertise to people.  So it's kind of like a whole lot of BS. If you have built a following of 20,000 people through a Facebook page, Facebook then says, I want $5, $10 proposed or more in some cases for that message to get to all 20,000 people. If they literally hold it up. They literally hold your fans hostage, right? So. Because it doesn't do it to me. You have a personal page. You have a personal or a Facebook page. If you look at your Facebook page and it'll say this post has reached. Yes, but is this a fire? I mean, it doesn't matter. You can be scrolling through posting or doing your own stuff and it'll throw on as they look at it as much. To reach these or that. What do you see if you want to boost your followers? Yeah. No, no, it doesn't go up to all your fans. It doesn't. You're not reaching all your fans. Unless all of your fans have notifications on. Yeah. You have to get them to go and click notifications. Who wants to plug them in? Yeah, that's why people are bouncing. Because they're holding your. Yeah, so if you boost it then you're reaching all the people that are following you. If you don't boost it, it doesn't. No, it comes up to a few years but I'll send it to Facebook page and now I don't say it. I don't even have a personal Facebook page. So with Twitter, with Twitter you get all the fans that you gained. The message goes out to most of them and until about six months ago, the algorithm changed. So it depends on how, what's featured in their latest area and they're beginning to become and not say, Taiwan's no longer in Taiwan same.  I'll be like, yeah, I posted it on Twitter multiple times. They'll say I didn't see it. And so, this is one reason why I'm talking about social media actually, I've put a lot of work into boosting my own personal newsletter because at least for email, I know it's getting to the red box. You don't get to know these things a lot. Twitter no longer, so when you read Twitter, it's no longer chronological. It's the most popular, it's the most popular tweet. So what it does is it gives an algorithm that shows you what it thinks the most popular tweet might be that you might be interested in from all your friends. You can reset that drone account or you can go and use TweetSuite at the mall. I use TweetSuite at the mall? Yeah, yeah, to see TweetSuite. But yeah, if anyone's accessing it through the web and unless they go to their personal setting and change it to the timeline by when this is posted, they're seeing whatever Twitter thinks that most of you are interested in. It's not a Instagram, but it's more of a watchable phone, you don't have Instagram. I have Instagram, I choose to use it differently than actually posting pictures. I just noticed those trends in that direction. And when the author wrote that today, I thought, well, that's very interesting. I haven't noticed these age trends. So I can't really speak on that. I haven't noticed the ages. But I think it's just sort of the younger ability to read. Or going to Snapchat. Yeah, I don't have Snapchat either. But yes, I know that's popular with the kids as they stick to it. But Facebook is like, you know, Facebook is like, they're following a parent star following them. They're like, they ran the Instagram, they're like, my mom's star following me, I just can't get away from it. You can't post what you really want to post as your mom. Yes, I have a question. Mine is in Johanna. I'm on Twitter because my favorite people are on Twitter, Steven Keeney, Joe Hill, Pat Nozzle, that kind of thing. I literally follow these people just to find out what news is coming from them and hopefully they're entertaining. And then there's just some regular people that I find entertaining. But they'll, Twitter will say, hey, look at this person. This person has the same likes as you. Check him out. I do that. And usually it's shocking. But if I go over to Facebook, Facebook gives me a, hey, do you know this guy from kindergarten, hey, you want to connect with this chick you dated in 1997? It's like, no, I don't, no, I don't. But on Instagram, I like to do pictures. So I'm on Instagram and Twitter. That's all I want. Well, YouTube, but that's a completely different type of story. So I'm another extrovert and all advice for marketing and outreach and networking is all aimed at extroverts. And I figured out eventually that I could either feel guilty for not doing that thing, or I could find ways that work for me and don't try to meet up the truth. So I do this stuff that's fun to me that works with the way that I actually communicate and not the ways that I wish or other people wish I communicated. And I do this for me, not because I'm in my 40s, but because I am not particularly a visual painter, you know, unless a lot of my pictures are close to my third, but I work. If I took a picture and I would be a painter, I work, I'm an artist, so I work. I like that, I work. And I, so I have clear and then I really like lot of other stuff coming naturally to me. I like writing things a little longer than a few types, but I have a short entrance in. So 750 word essays are a thing that works really well for me and having a regular comment comes out on someone else's site, so someone else is handling the moderation of the comments that I've been doing a lot. For me, being a visual artist, first I leave more to what's missing around because I like to post sketches before it's finished. You see the process. And then I know this, with Facebook I would post something and like all day I would be in the light. Instagram I would be like, like, like, and I was like, what's going on? And that's what you talk about, the algorithm. It's like nobody would be seeing it. So that's another reason I just really want to post anything on Facebook unless it's like family related or like my artwork and my story, you can read it on Instagram, it has to be a quick response. And it's just easier, you know? I got a question for you.  Yeah, that happens. Do you want to mark your stuff? No. No? No, because people would take that off. I want to write it for people to take it off. How do you deal with that? Because I just like to take out, my style is pretty unique and I don't think it's, I think it's pretty easily recognizable then. It's not like it's a one-off thing. It's not like it's not copyrighted, you know? It's out there, it's published. So I'm not really worried about somebody still in it because it's very emotional. Do you have an approach? Approach, I mean. Like, I've seen somebody, you know, putting your stuff up there, I'm just, I'm curious. No, I've never seen anyone. I haven't had people say it. I've had few artists, I imagine.  They'll show it about me. I really, because usually they aren't really that good, so I'm not really threatened by it. You know what I'm saying? They're really good, you know, really they do their own thing, but I don't understand. So anybody that's really happy with it, and happy with you all, it's not really going to be a threat to you. You really come in your own personal style, and you're really, really good at this thing, you know? So, yeah, I think it's great.  As long as they're not trying to make money off of it. Like, I did have a problem with a guy that I did a book with. I did a pen up, one of his characters, just as a friend. Like, just did a book with a pen up from our man. He was selling the prints at conventions, you know what I'm saying? Which I thought was a little strange, you know what I'm saying? Well, he stopped doing that when I was a friend. That's a little, that's a little, I just did this promo to go on your book as a country, you know, and you can sell it, you know, but now, they're always being way-blown, just kind of like, what do you mean? Yeah, well, to address your question, I run a business online, and I do a lot of Facebook, a lot of Twitter, a lot of Instagram, and I've had people take pictures that I've taken and put on my website, and use for their own work, except the same kind of business here, which is really annoying, probably. Or take the gist of my post for something that I would type up, hey, this day in history, or whatever, claim a business, and I would see that same, almost same garbage on their posts. I would try to put everything in some extremely annoying way. Well, I bet it's like an acceptable form of plagiarism. It is, I really feel it. Because people will share photos all over the place, and it's like, nobody, either there's no interaction, you don't know who the artist is, or if people just aren't. And don't use it for your business that's directly competing with my business. I can't, I couldn't imagine being a visual artist. I mean, if somebody steals my words, I have a case, you know, but if somebody uses my image as a meme, or whatever it might be, a picture on the internet, what am I supposed to do about it? Or attributing that thing to something like, the whole pet-paved-a-frog thing, now it erases me. You know, there's nothing that you can do about that. It's like, the most you can do is, and I've had to do this, is find the person in front of them, and if they don't want to take them out, tag them, and like, everybody will go in, because like, everybody will just all pile up on them, so they'll just take it down, or delete their pages. I think that's what I should do. And this is one of the things I'm learning, is this promotion on social media. That's something I'm trying to figure out, because one of the things I'm always, and I'm writing a book too, so that's coming, and I'm trying to figure out how much is too much. Like, I don't want to inundate people with like, oh my gosh, you're supposed to seven times in a day, but also, the converse of that is, you were saying earlier, that not everybody sees everything, because the way the algorithm are now, so if I post seven things in one day, one thing from one subject, one person might see two of them. I mean, do you guys, how do you guys, I know you said you don't really use social media for promotion of your product, but I mean, do you guys use it? How do you use it? How much do you use it? Well, personally, I have to pull back, because every time I finish the page, I want to be posted up, and I was looking up, and I was posting my whole book, before I put it out, and I was looking up, and they got to see it, that's not mad at me, or something, but I feel like I have to pace myself before I post it. Like, maybe do a page every couple of days, maybe definitely not the whole book, but at first I was literally doing the whole book away, like that, but when I was kind of new to Instagram, I was like, I'm going to ask you about that, everything, I was like, so do you really read the whole book? Yeah. You'll find yourself in the project, and post excerpts, and here, my motto, well, what I live by is, I don't share, I'm published, I'm edited in a material period, so if I'm working on something, nobody's seeing it. That's just me, though. I know there are some authors who, I get tagged in there quite a bit, the seven words, the first seven sentences or lines of your book, I'm like, no, or your work in progress, I'm like, no, it's a rough draft. I mean, I wouldn't even show my dog, and my dog can't even read it. So, it's going to change more over the next couple of years, and there's no way you're looking at a work in progress, but that's how I feel about that, actually. At some point, I will share that stuff, you know, it's fun, I like to have fast feedback, and if I can't get so much, I know there are a number of people who are going to read it on Twitter, or hear it in a reading, as compared to some people who are actually going to get it in the book.  Well, the alien was saying, that's not what I'm scared of, I'm scared that there's like typhoons, and all those things, or macularies and everything, and you get in there, that's what Beep's progress part is all about. That's what, that's what the idea is, that's what I mean. It's like when I post pictures of ours, like tell me I'm pretty tough, it's like I just stroke my knee, it's like, tell me you love the sketch, it's the same thing of taking a selfie, I don't take any selfies, but I will show you some of ours. But this is your question, I look at the authors that I follow, and I see what annoys me, what doesn't, and what causes me here. But when I get a different follower, I look at them, and I go, do I want to follow this person or not? So I start to get a few of them, what's the team like, I don't even know who I look at, and I go, this person does nothing, but we see their positive reviews. And I don't want to follow that. This person, we see their positive reviews, but in between that, this is literally cute, yeah, I like that. No, nobody follows, nobody enjoys a thread, or a bead, or a timeline, that is 100% business, unless you are in business, like a burger king or something like that. And you're specifically going there for that one thing. People are more apt to read your book, or look you up, if you are an entertaining person, or you have other hobbies and associations.  So. Well, where's the person that deems, the person that didn't follow you? Yes, because I just deem everybody in your feed. I don't follow, I don't follow books, I don't follow waterstones, I don't follow waterstones, I don't follow waterstones, who have the, they say awesome things about books, they have interesting books, and if I ever am within 100 miles of waterstones, I'll probably go to waterstones. Well, one of the things that's common is that there are copyright issues that people use to see up to that point. This came up a lot, when I was president of this, and I think there's some recommendations that people are interested in. I was, the main thing was, how do you, I don't know how to deal with it. It's a copyright state, and how do you pay? You're not going to stop people from copying, but if you have a state, and you notice a lot of open sites do, they'll say, this is our copyright policy, to use my stuff, and you're going to decide about people using the same, you have to put my name, and this is how you contribute it. When people are surprisingly, a lot of people are often going to do what you ask, if you have a statement as a copyright analyst, as part of your website, it also protects you if they really do what you want to, if somebody actually takes your word, and publishes it either in their artwork, or they try to use a photograph of you if it's happening at the same time, or their own financial game, or they try to take your writing forward, you want to take the court, if you have that statement, where you clearly stated your copyright, and you also have to be careful if they contact you and say, can I use this thing? Like I sometimes have people contact me and say, I want to use your character, essentially I'm a hard-handed character, and I say, don't tell. I have to save you, my character is a copyright.  But, and like Tomorra first said, she doesn't even know the real fan fiction. But fan fiction is, it can be, there can be legalities with fan fiction, whether or not you're charging for that fan fiction. If you were writing fan fiction, and you are also an author who is using that fan fiction to sell their own books, like you've given away the fan fiction, fan fiction is free.  So fan fiction is such a subject. If people are interested in a question, so to quote, does science fiction have to do with the man who has it? If you can't join them, or if you can't join them, then I'll get at the credentials that will be very useful to help you. There's something called the root cause. And they will answer these questions. And there's also, if you're not a member, there's something called the root cause. Write or beware. Yeah, you can go to these websites and they will give you advice. They will... Sometimes, like one time, somebody was looking at a picture of a man. I was upset. And they're using this picture from what they're saying, a picture of me being upset. And they call my name. Those are some of the things you need to step out of the field. Write or beware is itself a really good example. Early enough, I wonder, it should be called social media, but it really is social media being used to make sure people hear about bad actors in publishing. So one of the things that it does is if you're looking for an agent, you can go on there and you can see if it was a scammer, who is this person who that's going to pay a reading fee, and other people can pay it a little bit. Yes, yes, people have to pay it. Barbara Dory-Strauss does an excellent job. And my mentor was Anne Christen, that formed it with her. And that it isn't amazing what they try to do to help authors to keep them from being scammed. Whatever you do, any aspiring authors in there, they would even publish America. Yeah. I want to thank everybody for their conversation. You'll be able to catch these authors on board or now, tomorrow, as we measure it. And if you're interested in checking out any of their books, Barton Noble is upstairs selling a piece by Anne of the book. And he is on the flaws of this table, telling us that I encourage you to go upstairs and buy some stuff. You're going to be just going to stop buying stuff? Yeah. I will. We'll be able to sign tomorrow. We'll all be able to sign for all the authors. Thank you, everybody. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.


A woman found an old classmate struggling, she then transformed him into a new man. In life, there can be a single moment that changes your world forever. For Wanja Mora, seeing one of her old classmates living on the streets was almost too much to bear. Witnessing the pain in his eyes and the shell of a person he'd become, she made it her mission to help him. You won't believe how this act of kindness changed the life of one man, but inspired a woman to transform as well. Living in Kiambo County in Kenya, it was a cool morning in October 2017 when Wanda decided to head out to her local market. It was a walk she had completed numerous times before her shift at the local hospital. Working as a nurse didn't allow much time for shopping, so the early mornings were the only time she could stock up on much-needed essentials. However, on this day Wanja spotted someone she recognized. Wanja realized it was an old classmate from her past named Patrick Wanjiru. Of course, she didn't recognize him right away. His rough appearance and dirty clothes made him almost unrecognizable. It was then Patrick reintroduced himself to Wanja, leaving her absolutely shocked. Patrick, or Henga as we called him, and I had met at primary school in 1992, Wanja told the BBC. Henga used to be a great soccer player all throughout school. We nicknamed him Pele. Sadly, her old friend had fallen on rough times since they last had seen each other, his life spiraling out of control. It was a sad sight to see for Wanja. Back in their school days, Patrick showed quite a bit of promise in his classes. Not only did he score very high grades throughout primary school, but he continued his education at Uthaira High School as well. Sadly, it was during his years in secondary school where things took a very dark turn in his life. Patrick revealed in an interview with Daily Nation that his downward spiral began when he started smoking cigarettes. From there, he moved on to marijuana. According to him, it all boiled down to peer pressure and wanting to fit in with his fellow students. Unfortunately, the teachers at the school caught wind of his new dirty deeds, and he was expelled without a warning. Thankfully, this wasn't the end of the line for Patrick, and he was accepted into another high school. However, his drug habit continued to wreak havoc in his life and education. In the end, he dropped out of school and turned to his drug habit full-time. At this point, his mother was growing concerned and decided to have him evaluated at the local hospital. Thanks to a referral from his previous school, Patrick was admitted to a psychiatric facility at Mathury Hospital. After running a series of tests, the doctors concluded that the drugs he had been taking had taken a negative toll on his brain. They chose to admit him to the hospital as an inpatient, but things did not go according to plan. During his time at the hospital, Patrick left the facility several times. He did not like the way he was treated and complained that they treated him like a mental patient, the doctors force-feeding Patrick medication all the time. Since he was not mentally ill, the treatment began to take a toll on him emotionally and physically. Unfortunately, it was Patrick's behavior outside of the hospital that continued to cause him problems. His mother revealed, when he was out of the hospital, he would walk around the neighborhood completely naked, or he would rummage through garbage. Sadly, things only got worse when Patrick became addicted to the drug attain. With treatment going nowhere, and his addiction to drugs only growing worse, Patrick fled the facility to live on the streets. He spent over 10 years living on his own and was troubled by the fact his family pretty much abandoned him during this time. What pained me the most was that my siblings were at home with my mother, safe and sound, yet I was on the streets, he recalled to Daily Nation. That was really depressing for me. Thankfully, Patrick's situation was about to turn around after meeting with his old schoolmate, Wanja. Worried about his condition and state of mind, Wanja bought Patrick lunch and implored him to stay in touch. She gave him her cell number, hoping he would reach out to her. He may have been abandoned by all of his loved ones, but she wasn't go to let him continue his journey alone. Over the next few days, Patrick stayed in contact with Wanja. They caught up on life and inspired by her kindness. He made the decision, he finally wanted to change his ways. However, turning his back on the drugs in his street life would be easier said than done. According to Wanja, drug rehab was very expensive in Kenya, and she didn't have the resources to raise the funds herself. In the end, she set up a crowdfunding page with the hopes of raising $975 to cover his first nine days. Unfortunately, they only raised $400 at the time. Despite falling short on the funding, Wanja refused to give up on her friend and pooled her resources so he could be admitted to rehab. Patrick was more than thankful and was determined to make his friend proud. In those first nine days, Patrick detoxed and regained some weight. He was on the path to a new life. Wanja couldn't believe how far Patrick had come in such a short period of time. Posting an update on Facebook, she revealed a week ago, Patrick, and I couldn't hold a normal conversation without me trying to hold his head up with my hand in order for him to concentrate. Today we can have a normal conversation with him confidently looking at me. It's amazing how the will to change can completely alter the course of someone's life. Wanja's post about Patrick inspired many on social media to share his story. On Twitter, it was retweeted over 50,000 times and pretty soon donations began pouring in for Patrick's rehab. Soon, there was enough money raised to cover his entire stay at the facility. During his time at the rehabilitation center, Patrick completely transformed mentally and physically. At the age of 35, he was a new man and couldn't wait to start the rest of his life. And things were only about to get better. Due to the generous amount of donations, Wanja was able to divert some of the funds to help set up a business for Patrick. It was called Hengis Store since that was his nickname in high school. While Patrick finished up rehab, his mother handled the business, waiting for the day he could take it over. Many call Wanja a hero, but she simply believed she did the right thing. People say I changed his life, but he changed mine too, Wanja revealed in an interview. I realize now that a small act can change a person's life.