I was just now reading an article on why cops touch the back of your car during a traffic stop. It turns out that they are a) checking to see that the trunk lid is lock and no one will pop out and ambush them (which has happened) and b) to leave fingerprints in case they later need evidence that they were with that car.
This made me think of my own personal procedures when a cop stops me for a warning or ticket (usually for speeding). I developed these over a few decades from experience and various TV and magazine articles.
I was just now reading an article on why cops touch the back of your car during a traffic stop. It turns out that they are a) checking to see that the trunk lid is lock and no one will pop out and ambush them (which has happened) and b) to leave fingerprints in case they later need evidence that they were with that car.
This made me think of my own personal procedures when a cop stops me for a warning or ticket (usually for speeding). I developed these over a few decades from experience and various TV and magazine articles.
The important thing to remember is that when approaching a car, cops do not know who is inside. Even if they look up who the car owner is, the car may be stolen. They often approach with one hand on their weapon just in case the person inside is dangerous. You do not want to make the cops any more nervous than they are already.
The first thing to do is to remain calm. Lots of people get scared and/or nervous when a cop stops them. If the cop sees you are nervous, it might make him nervous. He doesn’t know why you’re nervous or scared. It might be that, as far as he know, you just came from a bank robbery or you might be a serial killer (no kidding, Ted Bundy barely escaped being caught during a traffic stop).
Then the first physical thing you do is turn off the car engine and turn on the ceiling light. The cop will be a lot less nervous if he sees you are not planning a quick getaway. Another thing cops have to worry about is that the interior of the car is dark, and they cannot see who or what weapons may be inside (why do you think they are always shining flashlights into the interior of a stopped vehicle?) Alleviate them of this fear by turning on the ceiling light, so that they can get an unrestricted view of the interior.
Next, I like to roll down my window and place my hands on the door, so that they can see my hands and know that I do not have any weapons. Passengers can place their hands on the dashboard or, if they are in the back seat, on the headrests or backs of the front seats.
I do not make any sudden moves and if I need to move significantly, I tell the cop what I am about to do so he can watch me closely. I will make these moves slowly to ensure him that I do not intend to surprise him with anything.
On the occasion that my wallet with my driver’s license is in the glovebox, when the officer asks for my license, I tell him that it is in the glovebox and after he okays the move (either verbally or visually by nodding his head), I slowly reach over to the glovebox with my right hand and open the glovebox slowly and give him a chance to peer inside before I slowly reach in and extract my wallet.
Anyway, that’s my pointers for the night.
Remember: the main thing you don’t want to do is to make the officer any more nervous than he already is. You want to calm him down and through your actions ensure him that he is safe, and that you pose no threat to him.
Let me know if you have any interesting tactics you use when a cop pulls you over.
Here are a couple of thoughts I had tonight about Ridley Scott’s classic sci-fi/ cyberpunk movie, Bladerunner and what I see as a theme behind it.
This is one of my favorite Bladerunner/cyberpunk ambience videos. It sets the mood for this post of a solitary man on a balcony as he contemplates and gazes out over a futuristic, cyberpunk cityscape.
Just now I finished watching Ridley Scott’s Bladerunner for like…the umpteenth time. Not to be morbid or overly dark (though, as you know, I am a fan of dark stories and poetry), but since I turned 60, I have been thinking of death a lot more. As I am now 65 and have a shorter life ahead of me than behind me, and being at an age where my generation is dying off at an ever faster pace, I think about it even more. Sometimes, though I am in relatively good health compared to many of my age, I am absolutely terrified of it.
Last night, I started watching Bladerunner just to chill and get my mind off things, but I went to bed before it finished. Tonight, after work, I still needed to get my mind off some things and to chill, so I returned to watching Bladerunner. But this time, I saw a theme in it that I had never recognized before, especially when I was younger.
That theme is how the attitude with which we approach death and how we live our lives accordingly. I don’t know how blind or how big a fool I could have been not to have noticed this previously. I suppose it was just that I was enthralled by the action and the love story of Deckard and Rachel. Once you recognize the theme, the story seems more like a myth out of ancient times.
Look at it as if Roy and the replicants were people in some ancient myth. Here’s a incredibly brief summary of the plot.
Two men and two women, who know they are going to die soon, undertake a pilgrimage to find their maker and persuade him to extend their lives. Ironically, an assassin is sent to kill them, because they should not be on the same world as their maker (whom I see as their metaphorical god). This potentially shortens their lives even more. One man and one woman are killed, but the other two manage to find their maker, Tyrell. He tells them that he made them as well as he could, but he could not find a way to lengthen their lives though he tried. He tries to comfort them by mentioning all the wonderful things they have seen and saying that “the life that shines twice as bright, burns for half as long”. The man, in frustration and anger at the maker/god for not being able to extend his life, kills him. The assassin now shows up and kills the woman. Then the man chases the assassin with the intent of killing him. But, all the while he is chasing the assassin, the man is dying. When he finally catches up with the assassin, being at the point of death himself, instead of killing the assassin, the man sits down with him and speaks of all the marvelous things he has witnessed and that “all these moments in time will be lost like tears in the rain” (a beautiful analogy, by the way). Then he dies. Then the assassin runs away with a replicant with whom he is in love and who happens to have a longer lifespan than the others.
Are we not in a parallel situation as the replicants? Our lives are short and we want them to be longer, but (so far as we know) our god could not make them longer. It is what it is. Our lifespans are what they are unless they are shortened even more by some external force. If we could, how many of us would try to find our maker/god and try to convince him to prolong our lives? But if He could not prolong them, would He try to comfort us by reminding us of all the things we have seen and experienced?
The theme seems to be that we should accept death as inevitable and our lives as too short, but we should also comfort ourselves with remembering all the good things we have experienced.
There are a lot more subtleties that I could extrapolate on, but to me this is the essence of the Bladerunner story.
Am I on the mark or off base? Is this being simplistic? Drop your thoughts into the comment box below.
I have developed a new, inexpensive way of advertising The Chamber.
I am always for new ways to advertise The Chamber, especially if they are free. Over the last few weeks, I have been toying with one and it seems to be working. I haven’t noticed any significant increase in traffic yet, but I do get reports that people have been reading the so-to-speak ads.
For some time, I have had an account at Google Maps to review certain restaurants and other public venues I attend. Now and then, I get a note that someone liked my review. It dawned on me that if I create an account under The Chamber’s name, I will get a little free advertising for the magazine, especially when someone follows the link from my avatar to the website.
Advertising little mom-and-pop shops in south Arkansas will not garner me a lot of attention. However, I often travel between here and Midland, TX, passing through Dallas-Ft. Worth when I do. There are a lot of very big establishments along the route (think Buc-ee’s Travel Center). I also occasionally stay at La Quinta and dine at big chains. A lot of travelers check the Google Map reviews for info on these places.
Therefore, I review every place I can, but the larger the venue, the more I focus on it. Two people may read my review of El Toro Mexican restaurant in Dumas during a month, but 200 may read my review of Buc-ee’s along I-30 east of Rockwall, TX.
So far, I get notified now and then that someone liked my review. So I know people are reading them.
Stay tuned. I will provide updates on this strategy when something of note happens.
George Orwell’s writings have left a lasting imprint on American thought and culture…
George Orwell’s writings have left a lasting imprint on American thought and culture. ullstein bild/ullstein bild via Getty Images Mark Satta, Wayne State University Seventy-five years ago, in August 1946, George Orwell’s “Animal Farm” was published in the United States. It was a huge success, with over a half-million copies sold in its first year. […]
To the best of my knowledge, based on what I have read and seen in documentaries, vampires in traditional folklore are much different from the modern conception of a vampire as an immortal, erotic figure that can come out into the open only at night and that feeds on the blood of the living.
As with lycanthropy, vampirism has a corresponding psychiatric disorder, clinical vampirism, in which a person has an erotic obsession with drinking blood. It is related to Renfield’s Syndrome or Renfield Syndrome, which is an obsession with eating living creatures such as insects. Renfield’s syndrome is named after the character Renfield in Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula, who had an obsession with eating insects. However, neitherclinical vampirism nor Renfield’s syndrome is a valid medical diagnosis in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manualof Mental Disordersproduced by the American Psychiatric Association.
That said, in legend and mythology and not including those found in literature or in cinema, there are probably thousands of species (for lack of a better term) of vampire. Each culture seems to have had its own variant. In the X-files episode “Bad Blood”, Mulder gives a quick rundown of the many types of vampires in legend and mythology.
Vampires in traditional folklore are much different from the modern conception of a vampire as an immortal, erotic figure that can come out into the open only at night and that feeds on the blood of the living. In bygone days, a vampire was most likely someone cursed, or who had committed a grave sin or crime, who rose from the grave to plague the living, most likely the vampire’s relatives or someone who knew the vampire in life. To keep someone someone with the potential to be a vampire from returning from the dead, various peoples used various preventive measures. One of the most common was to drive a stake through the vampire and into his/her coffin, theoretically pinning them down. Sometimes the body was decapitated or its legs cut off. I don’t recall offhand the use of garlic and crucifixes to repel vampires in legend, but it’s not impossible. To my mind, they are most likely inventions of Hollywood, just as werewolves transforming under a full moon or a silver bullet being necessary to kill them are inventions of Hollywood.
John William Polidori (1795-1821) Date of portrait unknown.
The modern concept of a vampire as a cultured, sexually attractive individual became most popular with Dracula. However, before Dracula (1897) was Carmilla (1872) , by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu and The Vampyre (1819) by John William Polidori. These models probably led to vampires being imagined as attractive, seductive aristocrats in the films of the 1970’s and 1980’s. From there the titillating sexual aspect gained greater importance over time to where it is today, probably more as a way to attract a larger audience or readership than for any other reason.
Illustration from Joseph Sheridan leFanu’s 1872 novella, Carmilla
Vampires have mostly been one-dimensional characters until the last few decades when writers like Anne Rice gave them considerable depth.
I have no real impulse to write anything about vampires. Though I will occasionally watch a movie or read a story involving vampires, they (or at least the modern stereotype) haven’t yet interested me enough to take the time and effort to write about one. If I were to write about one, it would most likely be to resurrect (no pun intended) the original concept of a vampire as a cursed person, most likely a peasant, who rises from the grave to plague the living. There would be a lot of psychological angles to use in forming the backstory of the characters and revealing their depth, the inner workings of their minds and emotions.
Assume the father of a family dies and they, for whatever reason, believe he might rise again as a vampire., but they poo-poo the idea only to have neighbors report than they saw the father walking about the village or killing someone. How would each member of the family feel? Would the mother, who used to quarrel frequently with her husband, readily believe the reports? Would the children be in denial? Maybe vice versa. Who goes out to see if the reports are true? What do they feel? What do they feel on seeing the father? Is it actually him or someone who looks like him? How can they be sure? Does the father attack one of them? How do the rest feel about that? Do they feel the killing or any killing is justified or at random? Maybe the children who are abused by the mother set her up to be killed. Maybe the mother sets up the children or uses them as bait to trap the father. Taking another tack, maybe the mother was so passionately in love with the father that she decides to join him in death. Does she try to bring the children along against their wishes? There is a lot that can be done without resorting to clichés of the supernatural and the erotic to make the story interesting. Everyone these days is writing about super sexy vampires with super powers. It’s take to approach this subject from another angle.
Writing about a serial killer who revels in blood, a realistic vampire rooted in reality, fascinates me considerably. Then I would b able to explore vicariously through a fictional character the psychology of someone like Bela Kiss, the Hungarian serial killer of the early twentieth century; Peter Kuerten, the “Vampire of Duesseldorf”, who terrorized Duesseldorf, Germany in 1929; or Countess Elizabeth Bathory, who is said to have killed hundreds of young girls in central Europe in the early seventeenth century. Some say that Countess Bathory killed the girls to bathe in their blood and thereby remain youthful, but others say that element of the legend wasn’t concocted until decades after her death. In any event, that does make for an interesting psychological aspect in a work of fiction.
Mugshot of Peter Kuerten, April 1931
In fact, I started a story involving Countess Bathory some years ago. I have yet to finish yet, but only because my imagination for magic and the supernatural was weak and hit a bout of writer’s block crossing the cerebral highway. If I sit down and focus, I may be able to come up with some interesting ideas. In fact, this article is helping spur some ideas.
My recommendation to my readers is to find some reliable sources and read up on Bathory (what I am writing here are just notes off the top of my head based on research I did several years ago). The countess becomes more fascinating the more you find out about her actual life. Describing her simply as a psychotic, bloodthirsty villainess is specious. The historical Elizabeth is exceptionally complex. The accepted story is that she bathed in the blood of young girls to preserve her beauty. This facet of Elizabeth’s story is quite likely false. However, if we were to assume it was true, then we have to ask ourselves, why was maintaining her beauty of such importance? Vanity would be the obvious explanation, but why was she vain? Was it a matter of insecurity? Why?
Elizabeth, Countess Bathory (1560-1614) Portrait 1585. a late sixteenth century copy of the only portrait (now lost) known to have been painted of her in her lifetime.
From what I have read, my theory is that she loved her husband passionately and wanted to always be attractive to him. This is not a streak of closet chauvinism in yours truly. In my admittedly spurious readings, history supports this theory.
Alternately, if we decide to avoid this angle of a search for eternal beauty, then why did she torture all those girls? Accounts state that she killed at least eighty and maybe as many as 650. Was it a twisted power trip as with modern serial killers or was it something else? One source I read said that her husband taught her how to torture people. So was this like a hobby they shared? From what I have read, Elizabeth’s rampage against young girls increased after her husband’s death. Apparently, her husband exerted enough control over her (or maybe he had a calming influence) that she was able to control her urges toward violence. That would explain why she threw herself into her macabre pastime after his death.
Maybe her violence was rooted in jealousy. When Elizabeth married her husband, she was about the same age as the girls she would later torture.
Maybe Elizabeth had Intermittent Explosive Disorder, a mental disorder in which a person is susceptible to sporadic urges to violence.
Maybe the sight or taste of blood was erotic to her, for reasons that can only be speculated. This would be clinical vampirism and would put an interesting spin on the currently prevalent image of vampires in pop culture.
As you can see, a historical vampire can be a considerably more intriguing character than someone who is all superpowers and sex.
Anyway, that is my post for now. I have to attend to other matters.
I was up late (i.e in the early morning of December 18) working on a future post to be entitled “A Few Thoughts on Vampires”. At one point in it, I mention John William Polidori, who wrote the original vampire story The Vampyre, whose main character is the vampire Lord Ruthven, a character which was used in subsequent vampire stories by a variety of authors. The name Ruthven was taken from Lady Caroline Lamb’s novel Glenarvon.
A little research in Wikipedia alone on Lady Caroline Lamb reveals what must be the tip of the iceberg of Byron’s complex interpersonal relationships. At this point, I wish I was a romance novelist. The tale of Byron’s (the author of the epic poem “Don Juan”) love life, or at least his affair with Lady Caroline Lamb, would make for a fascinating novel.
Polidori was Lord Byron’s personal physician and traveled with him. I have read that he and Bryon were quite likely lovers. Lord Ruthven is based in part on Byron. As I mentioned, Byron’s relationships were complex.
The Vampyre is about Lord Ruthven, a vampire who kills only lovers and who is based on Byron. Polidori’s eventual suicide was probably rooted in his relationship with Byron. The name Ruthven was taken from Glenarvon by Lady Caroline Lamb, who had a “well publicized” affair with Byron in 1812. After Byron broke off the affair, Lady Lamb became obsessed with Byron. They continued corresponding, often bitterly, for sometime nevertheless. Glenarvon, published in 1816, was a “thinly disguised” portrait of her affair with Byron.
As an example of their later relationship, here is a quote for the Wikipedia article.
Lady Caroline’s obsession with Byron would define much of her later life, as well as influencing both her and Byron’s works. They would write poems in the style of each other, about each other, and even embed overt messages to one another in their verse. After a thwarted visit to Byron’s home, Lady Caroline wrote “Remember Me!” into the flyleaf of one of Byron’s books. He responded with the hate poem; “Remember thee! Remember thee!; Till Lethe quench life’s burning stream; Remorse and shame shall cling to thee, And haunt thee like a feverish dream! Remember thee! Ay, doubt it not. Thy husband too shall think of thee! By neither shalt thou be forgot, Thou false to him, thou fiend to me!“
What stimulated me into this minute bit of admittedly superficial research was reading Lady Lamb’s description of Byron as “mad, bad, and dangerous to know”. What a terrific description of anyone! This, if nothing else, shows the stereotype of a woman falling for a “bad boy” goes back at least 200 years. Here is a bit more on it from the Wikipedia article:
From March to August 1812, Lady Caroline embarked on a well-publicized affair with Lord Byron. He was 24, she 26. She spurned his attention on their first meeting, which was at a society event at Holland House. According to the memoirs of her friend Sydney, Lady Morgan, Lady Caroline claimed she coined the phrase “mad, bad, and dangerous to know” soon after meeting the poet. It became his lasting epitaph, but there is no contemporary evidence to prove that she coined the famous phrase at the time. She wrote him a fan letter; his response was to visit her because of her high social status, and then to pursue her passionately.
Yeah, their story would make a helluva romance novel.
I have been intending to read Don Juan for over thirty years now. Maybe I will get to it soon.
Below are portraits of Lady Lamb, Lord Byron, and Dr. Polidori. Check the dates of their births and deaths. Do the math. They all led intense lives and died young.
Thought? Comments?
George Gordon, Lord Byron (1788-1824) portrait dated 1813.
Lady Caroline Lamb (1785-1828). Date of portrait unknown.
John William Polidori (1795-1821) Date of portrait unknown.
As two of my published stories, “Shapeshifter” and “Wolfsheim”, concern werewolves, I thought I would write a post expressing my thoughts on werewolves and lycanthropy. This is not a scholarly article. It is just a summary of the conclusions I have reached over the years having researched the topic to a small degree as the basis for a novel (not yet written) involving a werewolf.
First and most importantly: I do not believe actual werewolves exist nor have they ever existed. It is simply impossible for person to change into an animal or into some sort of human-animal hybrid.
However, to paraphrase Nietzsche, what people believe is more important than fact.
I do believe there are people who believe they can become a wolf or another animal. The scientific name for this is lycanthropy.
Wikipedia, for better or worse, defines lycanthropy thus:
I feel that is a simple and straightforward summary based on everything else I have read. I am not familiar with the source, which Wikipedia states as “Degroot, J.J.M. (2003). Religious System of China. Kessinger Publishing. p. 484.”
An internet search for “clinical lycanthropy” will find many well-researched articles on lycanthropy as a psychiatric disorder.
Undoubtedly, it was the occasional case of clinical lycanthropy that gave rise to werewolf stories throughout history, before the science of psychiatry (or any science for that matter) arose, when people were more likely to take rumor as proverbial gospel and legends and myths as history. That people with this disorder confessed (often under torture) to being a wolf ingrained a belief in shapeshifting into an uneducated populace.
Someone who believes his/herself to be a wolf will act on those beliefs, which could, and I feel certain often did, result in crimes of extreme violence according to what that individual believes a wolf would do. Whether that belief is an accurate portrayal of what a wolf would actually do does not matter. The individual will act in accordance with his/her beliefs, whatever those beliefs are. This would, of course, have been the reason behind at least some of the infamous werewolves who were executed during the infamous werewolf trials of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
Another reason is that, for whatever reason, a person wanted to become a werewolf and therefore found a way to chemically induce that hallucination. Quite often in the historical record one will find that several people who wanted to change into a werewolf wore a belt that had a mixture of herbs and fat smeared on it. Some of these herbs, like nightshade, are quite poisonous. I believe that applying some of these poisonous herbs to the skin in a salve would allow a minute portion to soak through the skin and induce hallucinations. If a person wanted to become a wolf, for whatever reason, then he/she could actually induce the hallucination of being a wolf. Two of the most infamous cases of werewolfery involved use of a belt to become a wolf: Peter Stumpp and Gilles Garnier.
It is possible that someone might commit one or more brutal murders and then try to avoid responsibility for his/her actions by claiming to have been a wolf at the time and therefore not in his/her right mind. I sincerely doubt the likelihood of this defense succeeding in past centuries. In 2020, claiming not to be responsible for a murder because you were a wolf at the time would probably get you several years in a mental facility. However, in 1620, you would probably have been burned at the stake.
From a literary perspective, what fascinates me the most is the use of a werewolf as a symbol of human versus the most primitive animal nature, the superego/ego versus the id. Similar symbolism crops up in mythology, legends, and history repeatedly in one form or another. The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson is one example in literature. One example from Greek/Roman mythology is the centaur, half human and half horse, educated, intelligent, and refined but susceptible to animalistic drives and impulses.
That’s all the time I have for this today. I have errands calling me. Perhaps I can pick this up at a later date in more detail and with my sources cited.
Reprinted from Farmington Writers Circle, April 25, 2019.
I have seen several comments on television shows that no one has made money on publishing short stories since probably the days of Hemingway. I don’t know how true this is, but I know that, except for the most professional and most competitive, very few markets pay very much for a short story. You can find this out by researching pay in the Writers Market or using Duotrope. One would have to write short stories constantly and have them published constantly in order to make a living from them.
However, for me the value of a short story is not in the money it brings. The value is in the publicity and “face time” (an old Navy expression about the time one has in the boss’s full view or with his attention focused on you) in front of the public. “Face time” equals exposure to people critical to you career.
If then, face time is the primary reward one has from a short story, then it would behoove an author to have as many of his stories in front of public (i.e. published) as possible. But creating a short story is time and labor intensive. As in most endeavors, it is important to reap as many rewards for as few products in as short a time as possible. This is simply being efficient and the more efficient, the better in any endeavor. The next question then is how to do this with a short story?
Once you have a story published, many, if not most, magazines will not touch it because they want first rights. There are many that will publish it, but by far the majority will not pay or will pay only a fraction of what they pay for first rights. However, you still have face time with its publication.
Therefore, the trick with a short story is to have it continually reprinted while keeping as many stories in front of the public as possible, whether they are traditional short stories, flash fiction, micro-fiction, or whatever. One advantage of the web is that usually the publishing website will let you link your byline or bio to your website, drawing more traffic to you and to your works. Once that story is on the Internet, it is often up there forever. So why not have as many links as possible to your website for all eternity?
The submission process is usually fairly simple and straightforward, if you have some experience with submissions, but may be challenging if you don’t. There are some key points to remember about reprinting a short story:
If possible check the circulation or readership of the magazine where you will be submitting your work. As with stories being printed for the first time, the best approach is to publish with a publisher that has the largest circulation possible. It’s better to have your work published on a website that has 20,000 visitors/month versus 1,000/month. This is more face time with less effort. For that matter, depending on your viewpoint, it may be more worthwhile to have a story published for no pay in front of a readership of 20,000 versus being paid $10 to have it published to a readership of 1,000. With reprinting, it is possible to do both.
Keep a history of where and when your work has been published. Some publishers will want to know where and when it has been previously published. Use any method you want, but I suggest using Excel or a submissions engine like Duotrope to keep things organized. Duotrope has a lot of advantages. It is worth the $5/month charge to take a lot of administrative tasks off you shoulders.
Read the submissions guidelines and restrictions on post-publication as well, whenever you submit a story to a publisher. Adhere to them. Some publishers will return the rights to you as soon as the work is published. With some, you may have to wait several months before resubmitting elsewhere. Some publishers won’t reprint your story without knowing that you have full rights to reprint the story. Be ethical; follow their guidance. It may save you some heartache later. All a publisher can do it to blacklist you, but why be blacklisted anywhere?
Study literary rights. Know the difference between first rights, reprint rights, and any other rights out there. Don’t get yourself blacklisted or in bigger trouble. This is simply being professional.
Take care, and I wish you much success with your writing.
I try to publicize my works as much as possible using social media, because it is very inexpensive (often free) and it has the potential of connecting with people around the world. My personal WordPress account shows that my viewers come from around globe from such diverse locales as Ireland, Russia, India, Singapore, Australia and Brazil among many others.
I became curious about what would be the best time to post to reach the largest audience. I did a little research on the Internet and made a few calculations and came up with some interesting results.
According to study by Fictionophile, the most “literate” of the United States is the East Coast, where most major cities are concentrated along with most major universities and Ivy League Schools. Therefore, to gain the most exposure to this audience, you have to time your posts with the eastern time zone. How you want to do that, of course, is up to you. I try to post at 7:00 a.m. EST, when most people are rising for the and reading their e-mail or newspaper. But you might want to post at 5:00 or 6:00 p.m. when most people are coming back from work and settling in for the evening. You might also want to post on Fridays, often advertised as #FictionFriday, when people start to seek out reading for the weekend. There are a lot of other possible strategies as well. Fortunately, WordPress allows its users to schedule their posts, so this is easy to do for me.
Here are a few notes I took during my research. Being a former Naval officer, I still find military time easiest to use, so most of my time references are based on the 24-hour clock. I live in New Mexico, thus the references to Mountain Standard Time (MST). UTC is “Universal Time Coordinated, the successor to Greenwich Mean Time, which is the time in London, England. More on UTC can be found at https://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/timezone/utc.
To time European English-speaking countries for publicity, use Central European Time (CET) which is eight hours ahead of MST. (2030 MST Monday = 0430 CET Tuesday). Ergo, 0001 MST = 2001 CET.
India Standard Time (IST) is UTC + 5:30 or CET + 4:30. Ergo, 2030 MST Monday = 0930 IST Tuesday
Australian Eastern Daylight Time (AEDT: Sydney, Canberra) = UTC + 11/CET + 10
Staggering release times of announcements would seem to be best to catch a world audience. Ergo, for a three day free promotion, Release as follows:
0801 Mon. MST = 0001 Tuesday CET = 0431 IST
0001 Mon. MST = 0801 Monday CET = 1231 IST = 1701 AEDT
To make this easier for me to track, I use the World Clock feature on my iPhone clock, which allows me to track the time in several time zones at once. Currently, I am tracking the time in Washington, DC; Brussels, Belgium; New Delhi, India; Singapore; Perth, Australia; Sydney, Australia; and Honolulu. By targeting these time zones, I believe I can reach the majority of the English-speaking world.
Note that, if you are interested in targeting an Australian audience, they are about fifteen hours ahead of us (MST), so promoting book giveaways or announcements for a specific day is tricky. For example, if you have a book giveaway that starts at 8:00 a.m. MST on February 25, it won’t start for the folks in Sydney until 11:00 p.m. February 25. Here’s a screenshot from my iPhone to show the intricacies involved. Still, I believe that proper timing of your posts with the audience you want to reach will eventually be worthwhile.
Examples of the time zones with the majority of English-speakers
Phil Slattery, Writer, Publisher 