Book Trailers

I'm getting better. Check out my trailer for Royal Opposites:

And the trailer for Secret Bodyguard:

Royal Opposites!!! It Has a Home.

 So excited that Royal Opposites has a found a home with a publisher. It's now available at Astraea Press, Barnes & Noble and Amazon.com.

For more information, contact me at loribethcrawford@yahoo.com

Here's an excerpt from Royal Opposites:

“I do believe I owe you my life,” the man stated, never taking his eyes off her face.

The over-the-top line snapped her out of her awe. She wrinkled her nose. “A bit too dramatic, don’t you think?”

The smile left his lips, but stayed in his eyes. And she’d thought that weapon of his was lethal before. He wasn’t an amateur at using it, either.

“Perhaps,” he agreed, but she got the feeling he was just telling her what she wanted to hear. Unless he was a complete drama queen, he seemed to believe something else was behind his treatment from earlier. She didn’t know where it came from, but she had the undeniable urge to reassure him.

“I could be wrong, but I don’t think you’re the first customer who’s been cheated out of  money by that bank.”

He frowned at her. “What do you mean?”

Joan dropped her gaze to study the dark polished wood of the table between them. Did she dare tell him about her stupidity? That would make a great impression on the sexiest man she’d ever seen in her life. Who was she kidding? Great looking guys didn’t go out with frumpy chicks like her. Stupid or not. “I haven’t figured everything out, you know, with all the running away and stuff, but I’ve had the same conversation with them almost word for word.”

Amazon Sales Tracking

Okay...So I just found out about this site that will track my book sales on Amazon. Gotta admit, it's kinda depressing at the moment because it says that none have sold. I just have to give it time to update because I've had people tell me that they bought it within that period. Not to mention the fact that I've bought several myself.

Anyway...here goes!

Let's see how this goes! 

Standing My Ground

Free Shopping ain't always easy, but I learned to stand my ground last night.

I started off the evening at CVS. That trip was actually pretty fine. Other than me being a doofus and misplacing a crucial coupon. I sat out in the car until I located it. Naturally, it wasn't raining when I parked. By the time I found the coupon, it was pouring. So I'll take responsibility for that one.

Rite Aid and Walgreens, not so much.

I headed to a new (to me) Rite Aid since I'm just starting to learn their system to finish purchasing enough Proctor and Gamble items to earn a $35 gift card. I had the perfect scenario planned out.

4 Nyquil - 15.96
2 Puffs - 4.98
Total - 20.94

Minus
$5 off $20
$8 Nyquil mq
$4.98 Puff mq
$2 Wellness Q

= $.96 oop.

Get back the Nyquil $1 SCR and the $20 purchase puts me over the top for the $35 P&G rebate.


Then the State of California had to go and screw up this perfect shopping trip. It would seem that in the War on Drugs, they have limited the quantities of over the counter medication a customer can buy at one time. In this case, the limit was 3 small bottles of Nyquil.

Okay, I understand that some folks are out there making what have you with the ingredients found in cold medicine. However, my coupon stated that I needed buy 2 of them to get my Puffs for free. And darn it! I want my Puffs!!

Now that I'm an inch from panicking because not only does it screw the Puffs deal, I didn't want to burn a $2 coupon on a 3rd Nyquil if I'd need it later to get my Puffs, so I had them take off the 3rd Nyquil completely which left me with a new problem. My total was now $9. It needed to be $20 before I could use the $5 off $20 coupon.

So back into the store I went. I had $11 dollars to fill with items that I had other coupons for so I could keep my out of pocket low. Since I've changed my organization method a bit, it meant that most of my current coupons were in the car and it was still pretty rainy out.

Deals were pretty hard to spot. Mostly because there weren't many. Even the clearance makeup, my old standby, was gone. I had coupons for Hefty bags, but the didn't even sell Hefty. What is that about? I thought about getting some Tide, but my coupons were in the car.

Then I remembered that I still had my $3 off 2 Pantene coupons with me that I hadn't used yet. Granted, I have tons of shampoo already, but I will eventually use it. And it was part of the P&G deal, so I went for it. Four more bottles brought my total up enough to use the $5 off $20.

After all was said and done, the replacement transaction only cost me 2 pennies more than the original so overall that was fine. It also pushed me over the top for my $35 gift card. I was a happy camper.

For two seconds.

Currently, Rite Aid has a sweepstakes going called the Game of Life. You earn game pieces with every purchase. Unless you are purchasing certain items. Then you get bonus game pieces.

After that final transaction, the cashier only handed me 1 game piece when I was supposed to get 5. She pointed to the receipt that indicated only 1 piece had been earned. I pointed to the ad that clearly indicated bonus pieces would be earned for the shampoo and that I had 4 bottles.

We stood there and went round and round about it until another manager came over. I showed him the ad and he agreed with me. And she still wouldn't give me the pieces. He explained it to her then went to check out another customer. Finally she understood that she was supposed to give me more, but not how many. He held up four fingers and she handed them over.

A totally simple shopping trip went completely awry. And the evening was not yet finished.


After Rite Aid, I went to Walgreens to do the Pepsi deal one more time. The 12 packs were on sale 5 for $15 and the 2 liters were 4 for $5. When you buy $20, you get $10 back in register rewards. Pretty good deal. Especially when combined with diabetic meters that were free after a manufacturer coupon and giving a $5 overage when stacked with a store coupon.

Even though it sounds complicated, it was a pretty simple transaction. Unfortunately, this store didn't have the meters on the floor. They were in the pharmacy. So that's where I checked out.

Neither pharmacist realized that the manufacturer coupon needed to be adjusted from $10 to $9.99 because that was the sales price of the meter. The store coupon came off fine. So did the other register rewards. The problem came at the end.

After I paid, the register reward didn't print. The pharmacist who'd helped me was already walking off. I stopped him and told him the problem. He gave me this look and said, "just for that?" Uh. Yeah. There's no reason for me to shop here otherwise. He tried to tell me the standard lie that it didn't print because I'd used register rewards to pay for the purchase.

Except, I didn't use the RR I'd gotten from the Pepsi deal when I'd done it on Sunday. That would have stopped a second from printing. He called the manager over. He tried to tell me the same thing. I pointed out the other RR that I'd gotten from doing the deal in the exact same way and he tried to ring it up again. Nothing printed.

Still, I wasn't leaving without my RR. That was the whole purpose of the trip. The manager switched to another register and rerang the transaction without the meter and the coupons. The reward printed fine. I wanted him to do everything so they could see that the coupons didn't effect the printing.

The paper actually came out a little bit from the first machine. It was just blank. Then they had to change the paper. Seriously? And you guys still think it was because of the coupons?

The manager just handed over the RR that finally printed and I left. I still have the feeling that my out of pocket was too high. I'm going to try to let it go, though. After all, I'm going to be selling all this stuff to earn money for my trip to Sweden this summer. Time to move forward with the plans and quit looking back.

Powerful Wisdom from Will Smith

A friend posted this on Facebook and it's amazing.

I Got Your Petty & Vindictive Right Here, Buddy!

Special Election Day.

Here in California we're being asked to voice our opinions on several measures that will help us balance our state's budget and get us out of our current financial crisis. As per usual, I waited until the last minute to read the arguments for and against the propositions before going to vote this evening.

The California Secretary of State always has details of ballot measures posted online so we can read a bit more in depth about what's going on than what is sent in mail. Usually I have a pretty good idea which way I'm going to vote after reading the impartial analysis of the measure. Just for fun, I read the arguments for and against on the next page.

And that's where I lost my goat.

Maybe it's just my week for my goat to keep getting got, but I really don't take kindly to being called "petty, vindictive and childish" because I don't think legislators should get a raise during economic crises such as this one.

Maybe it's just me, but if the State can't afford pay little things like income tax refunds, then they can't afford to give folks raises. That's not childish. That's smart money management. You don't go out and buy a new car if the other one works fine and you're having trouble paying your light bill. Well, some folks do, but they're silly, too.

The proposition might have given me more pause if it would take money away from legislators. After all, we all need something to live on. But I think they can manage to hold out a bit longer at their current pay level with no hardship whatsoever.

The argument that the average salary of $116,000 is only middle class is really insulting to those of us who are nowhere near that level, but somehow manage to get by just fine. What a jackass. If they need more money, do what the rest of us do and get a 2nd job.

Or hey, here's a novel concept, manage that $116,000 better so you can get everything you need without too much stress. Honestly, if you can't handle a salary at that level, then what makes you think you can handle the State's budget? Oh wait. You can't. That's why we're in this mess to begin with.

So I guess it's a good thing he didn't call me snarky. I'd have to accept that move on. I digress.

Back to the pros and cons arguments on the Secretary of State website. It seems to me that the guy who wrote the argument against shutting these raises down missed the day they taught persuasive writing. I can't for the life of me figure any other reason for his beginning with such an inflammatory statement that is going to do nothing but alienate people and close their minds to any valid arguments he may have actually had.

Of course I couldn't find any because my reflex is to poke holes in anything the man says. If he were to tell me that the sky was blue, I'd look for a way to prove it was red just to spite him.

I'm sure you've figured out how I voted on this Prop by now. To be honest, I only clicked on the argument page to see if someone could convince me to vote the other way, but my mind had already been pretty much made up before I got there.

It's just that Pete Stahl and his name calling ticked me off. And now I'm letting it go.

"Do You Need That Many Mustards?"

Since I've been learning how to shop for free, I've been having a blast. The last two days, however, I've hit a couple of snags. Yesterday, Target refused to adjust a coupon amount down to the purchase price of seven items I wanted to buy - per their own corporate policy - so I ended up only buying one of the nine total items I'd planned to purchase for a grand total of $.95. Then today, I get into an annoying discussion with the cashier at Pavilions when I tried to purchase 4 bottles of French's mustard.

Perhaps it's because the Pavilions thing happened on the tail end the Target fiasco that it has really stuck in my head. Here's the background:

Safeway (Vons, Pavilions, etc.) has a double coupon policy where they will double coupons up to $1. Not as good as it has been in the past, but that's still something. I ran into an issue at Ralphs where they only double one like coupon per transaction and I wanted to know if Pavilions had the same policy.

Instead of a simple 'yes' or 'no,' the cashier asks, "Do you need that many mustards?"

Huh? Really? Why is the number of mustards I wish to purchase your business? I don't have much of a poker face so I'm sure my expression immediately conveyed my annoyance and the woman got super nice. Turns out the answer to my original question is, 'yes.' They will only double one like coupon per transaction.

I'd been prepared for that answer and had already separated everything out on the conveyor belt into transaction groups so things went pretty smoothly from there, but I still can't get this woman's initial reaction out of my head.

Given the state of our economy, it always amazes me when people turn down money. Not that I'm in a position to do any major economic stimulation by myself right now, but every little bit helps. Under that theory, it's really bad business for stores to turn away sales like this.

Yesterday, Target had the opportunity to earn an additional $7.56 from me. Instead, they only got $.87. Granted, my out of pocket expense after coupons would've been less than $.50, but Target would've gotten the value of the coupon plus $.08 additional per coupon used from the manufacturer. Instead, they settled for $.87. If this is the corporate business model, it's no wonder sales are down.

Today, Pavilions got everything I'd planned to spend and more because the mustard hadn't been on my original list. I happened to walk down that aisle and see the bottles on sale at 2 for $3 making them $1.50 each. I had about six $.50 off coupons when doubled would make the mustard $.50 each. Of course I'm going to stock up at that price. It's silly not to. That's if you can consider four bottles stocking up.

So, yes. I do need that many mustards. Given that the purpose of a grocery store is to make money by selling products to customers, don't you think it's a pretty bad idea to try to talk those customers out of buying the products that cause the stores to make money?

Granted, $2 is not a very large drop in Pavilions profit bucket, but it is a drop. If you are trying to talk me out of a sale, you can bet there are cashiers all over the country trying to talk other customers out of a sale. It doesn't take very long for that same $2 to snowball into hundreds of thousands of dollars in missed sales.

Before long, the store will cut costs by cutting jobs if they don't have to go out of business altogether. And then where will you be?

What's really sad is that we, as average Americans, don't seem to get that we're all connected. This applies equally to both the cashier who negatively impacts the bottom line by talking customers out of sales then wonders why when they get caught in a massive layoff and the CEO who cuts jobs at the company only to wonder why no one is buying his goods anymore.

So to answer the woman's question, "Yes. I do need that many mustards. You need me to need that many mustards. The people we've annoyed in the line behind me with this stupid conversation need me to need that many mustards."