Twitter Feeds ... by C.L. Beck

It all started innocently enough. My friend, C. Larene Hall, had a new book out that Amazon was giving away free for a few days. And a brilliant thought occurred to me.

Okay, maybe not brilliant, but very smart.

Well, maybe not very smart, but ... umm ... all right ... so, a totally non-original idea came to me. "Announce it on Twitter!" I said to myself, while jumping for joy and clicking my heels in the air ... a move that my hubby, Russ, claims only results in my totally missing the heels and kicking myself instead.

Ha! I am Cindy, the graceful, the talented! I laugh at his insinuations.

After executing the jump, and then rubbing liniment on my bruised calves where I'd kicked them, I headed out to Twitter. Being conversant with the site, it only took me two or three or ten tries before I finally got it right. The entry read:

"Mary's Spyglass," kid's historical fiction by C.Larene Hall. Free at Amazon .... (Getting the word out for my friend!) #free

I even remembered to put in a hash tag!

Ah yes, my moment of glory. I showed it to Russ, and he frowned slightly. "You probably shouldn't include the word "#free." With your luck, that hashtag will link your tweet to something undesirable."

I looked at him out of the corner of my eye. Ha! I am Cindy, the talented tweeting genius! I laugh at his insinuations.

Besides, what does he know about tweets? He doesn't even have a Twitter handle.

I checked for comments to my tweet a few days later in one of my dashboards. Surely millions of my friends in Farmville were responding with glee to the offer of a free children's book.

Nope -- none. Zip. Zilch.

I guess they were all too busy learning how to tell boy goats from girl goats so they could milk the right one. But, there were several hashtag tweets that the dashboard indicated were simiar to mine. To whit:

#free amateur bondage videos dungeon

#free hot sex porn movies pitingmentsu1602

Do you want #free wine? Share this FB photo

[We interrupt this almost true story, written by Cindy, the talented tweeting genius, to provide a disclaimer. Although she denies a tendency to embellish everything that happens to her, and in reality can create a tornado out of a little dust devil, the aforementioned tweets are real. 

And now, we return you to your regular programming....]

So where was I? Oh yes. Amateur bondage videos and free wine. They should definitely co-exist in the same category as kid's historical fiction, right?

Well, all I can say is that -- despite what Russ says about it -- it wasn't my fault. It's Twitter's fault. Their software needs a little fine-tuning.

Okay, a lot of fine-tuning.

Still, when one of Twitter's programmers finally gets done fixing the whole hashtag thingy, I will not jump for joy nor click my heels together.

Mostly 'cause I'm out of liniment. But,  he can feel free to do so.

------

(Author's note: If you enjoyed this mostly true bit of humor, then sign up for my newsletter in the sidebar on the right. That way you won't miss out on future fiction  fun.

Twitter Feeds © C.L. (Cindy Lynn) Beck,   Image © Cieleke
Tags: Twitter, tweets, hashtags