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On Thursday (Feb4th), a user told me that my blog had a trojan warning. It had been hacked. All sorts of things were happening, different each time. Adobe Acrobat would start, a message about a damaged file, redirections to random websites culminating in a final jump to China TV. This is a self-hosted Wordpress blog. In other words, I’ve downloaded the basic blogging software from Wordpress, configured it and FTPd it to Powweb, the server host, using Filezilla. I’m responsible for upgrades, appearance, and hacks. I’d just networked it using Facebook’s Networked Blogs app by copying a script into a sidebar. The script had worked and everything was fine. Deleting the script caused an instant change in the behaviour, but the redirection came back.
So I warned others on Facebook, and I emailed Powweb support. I went to the Wordpress.org forums and found that hacking was too common, and there was a detailed fix here. This entails deleting the installation on the Powweb server using their control panel, and then FTPing a new clean version from Wordpress. It took all Friday to back up, restore, and upload. Nothing to it. On Saturday, Powweb support sent a message saying they’d checked it and it was all fine. It was all fine because I’d fixed it.
One of the steps involved making a .XML file of my blog using the Export feature. I also have a Wordpress.com blog which I used three years ago to blog my novel. Having restored the blog you’re reading, and feeling pretty smart, I thought I’d back it up properly by importing the .XML to my Wordpress.com blog. This worked fine and I now have both blogs looking good. The next step is to ask a new registrar to transfer this domain from Powweb so Wordpress.com can map it to my Wordpress.com blog. In other words, I’m stepping back from Self-hosting. I can’t afford the time to upgrade and fix hacks. My upgrading was only a few months behind and yet this was most probably the way a hacker got in. I prefer to let Wordpress.com do the clever computer stuff while I get on with writing and painting. So go over to my other blog which will become iandsmith.com by the end of March because I’ll be saving some dollars and switching to it soon.
 Watercolour 14.8 x 21 The third in the series painted over Christmas 09 while staying in Cornwall.
 Watercolour 14.8 x 21 Here’s the second painting in the Port Quin triptych.
 Watercolour 14.8 x 21 I painted this scene of the pilchard factory in Port Quin north Cornwall in December 2009 on The Langton, Daler Rowney not cold pressed grain fin 140lb A5 paper.
 Those great people at Rainy City Stories chose to publish a story I submitted months ago, In-Car Valeting. It’s a short, direct piece redolent of Raymond Carver’s active, surreal story Viewfinder.
Carver contrasts social and physical deformity, whereas In-Car Valeting contrasts physical and social mobility in a world that grows rapidly more divided. A man who has military habits, shiny shoes, slicked hair and a sharp salute is literally left behind. You feel the “tear-arsing Audis” are going to win the race south if the narrator hangs around any longer, not that he’s in any position to keep up himself.
The hitch-hiker / in-car valetor is a disabled former soldier trying to make a living with a ludicrous ill-thought out business start-up. He has a specially-adapted briefcase containing the tools of his trade. He’s similar to those brave and defiant former prisoners who visit door-to-door suburban estates with brief cases full of cleaning products.
The narrator feels he could do with a cleaned-up vehicle, but his haste to help the man get out of the car once he realises he possesses false hands reflects his own impatience, his own lack of social mobility. It’s a rat race, and there are winners and there are losers.
PS I’m spreading the word about the Veterans in Prison association, VIPA. Their website is http://www.events21.com/ and they’re also on Facebook.
 I had a hundred ideas for years of work while I was in New York recently. I’d never been to the US before. Caroline wanted to go, but I didn’t. From a UK writer’s point of view, I’m very glad I went. The effect was extraordinary. Getting out of JFK airport felt like the great weight of the UK’s resentful class system was lifted away, and suddenly everything and anything was possible. It’s no surprise that my writing credits have either been in my home town of Manchester, or the US.
I like New Yorkers. They have empathy, they’re realistic, pessimistic, funny, ironic, polite, sympathetic, direct, open and encouraging, Stop to take a photo and others stop to approve, and to see what you’re doing. NY is the place where you don’t get people trying to take you into care for being yourself.
I took this tourist photo from the bow of the Circle Cruise round Manhattan with my mobile phone. But I like the three living statues I inadvertently snapped.
The editors at Eclectica have had the wisdom and foresight to publish my stories over the years. I was spotlight author in 2006@http://tinyurl.com/c5mn5g.
“Eclectica was founded in October 1996 with the goal of providing a sterling quality literary magazine on the World Wide Web. At the time we were not able to find a forum that would be the net equivalent (in terms of content) of Harper’s, New Yorker, Granta, The Atlantic, and other publications providing quality material for the appetites of a wide variety of demanding readers. Although some of these magazines even had their own web-sites, they were conceived as companions to the print items rather than sites that stood completely on their own.”
“Thus Eclectica was born. The vision we shared was that of a magazine not bound by formula or genre, that harnessed technology to further the reading experience rather than for the sake of flashy gimmickry, and that was dynamic and interesting enough content-wise to keep readers coming back for more.”
“Thirteen years later, quality is still the sole criterion in our editorial process. If it is outstanding writing, then we want to share it with our ever growing, global readership. We provide broad categories for convenience’s sake, but we love to get material that just doesn’t fit into them. And while there are many, many online publications now that succeed, to greater or lesser degrees, in doing what we set out to do in 1996, we pride ourselves on being one of the longest-running and most consistent literary ezines on the web.”
My stories Have You Quite Finished? and Think Of a Name For It appeared in VerbSap – “an independent online literary magazine featuring an eclectic selection of concise prose.”
“We publish more than 100 short stories and author interviews each year, showcasing the work of recognized and emerging writers.”
“Our authors have been awarded Pushcart Prizes, Nebula Awards, and major grants such as The Guggenheim Fellowship, and many stories originally published in VerbSap have been reprinted in independent collections. Over the past three years, more than 20 stories from VerbSap contributing writers have featured on the storySouth Million Writers Award list of notable online fiction.”
Laurie Seidler
“Founding Editor of VerbSap and a former Reporter, Editor, and Bureau Chief for Dow Jones & Co. Her reporting has appeared in in The Wall Street Journal, among other newspapers, and she has had short fiction published in various literary journals. She is a graduate of Yale University and has an MFA in writing from California College of the Arts. She lives in San Jose with her husband and son.”
Randall Osborne
“Writes in the San Francisco Bay Area. His work has appeared in salon.com, identitytheory.com, the Chicago Tribune, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the San Francisco Bay Guardian, and The Progressive magazine, among others. He is finishing a book of stories.”
Paul Schweer
“(Seen Waking) is a part-time student at Rollins College. His work can be found online at AikiWeb. He lives with his wife Cheryl in Apopka, Florida.”
Neil Crabtree
“Lives in Miami, FL, and offers commentary through his daily blog, Believable Lies. He is completing a novel, The Barricades of Heaven, and a short story collection, Isolated Incidents.”
Transmission is one of many magazines to have had the foresight, intelligence and great taste to publish two of my stories.
The people behind Transmission are:
Graham Foster
“Graham is the ukulele-playing, garlic-obsessed editor of Transmission. While, at best, he has an amateur knowledge of all things horticultural, he writes regularly for Urban Garden Magazine. His particular literary passion is contemporary North American literature, something he is indulging by studying for a PhD at Manchester Metropolitan University, where he also teaches. His writing has appeared in The Daily Telegraph, Literary Review and Times Literary Supplement. He believes there is no greater pleasure than reading a quality book while drinking a quality beer…”
Jo Phillips
“Jo is the gentleman designer of Transmission. He is a softly-spoken perfectionist who whiles away his time at the club, slim cigar in hand, singing Russian folk songs with his elegant, lilting voice. Not content with being the aesthetic brains behind the magazine, he also reveals his love and knowledge of literature at key moments. Jo has a degree in the History of Art and Design, but really his eyes are firmly on the future.”
Stephen Ireland
“When not huddled behind his computer screen, exercising his computer wizardry, web-designer Steve is Transmission’s in-house action man. While his team-mates would weep at such activity, Steve likes nothing more than a throwing himself down some gushing rapids in his kayak. His love of the white water aside, he also enjoys thunderstorm hikes followed by a bottle of red. He is also the creative force behind Ivyparkmedia, a web-design company with extra ones and zeroes…”
“Transmission is a sturdy skiff on the turbulent waters of independent literature, packed with a cargo of the best short fiction. It features exclusive interviews, articles, writing guidance from industry professionals and reviews.”
“Transmission is designed to appeal to literature lovers from writers and academics, to bibliophiles and bookworms. Published tri-annually on a not-for-profit basis, Transmission continues to explore the choppy waters for the best and most original literary voices.”
“We publish only the best short fiction and with every piece illustrated with original artwork, we hope to stand out from the crowd. We are amongst a very small number of UK printed magazines solely dedicated to the short story. While we don’t pay for submissions, if your work is published you can be sure it will find itself in a well-respected literary magazine (that’s us!), alongside interviews and writing guidance from established authors and industry professionals.”
“A magazine showcasing some of the finest writing talent.” – BBC Online
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