News

Hi! It is Darla.
Okay, I got asked why didn?t I check the spam filter sooner? I do check the one on my end, on my machine. That one I check every day to make sure that something hasn?t gotten dumped that I don?t want dumped. Which is why I have it set to hold the emails till I dump them.
I got an email from one of the two people who suggested Ripley that she had done so. But I didn?t have the email. The spam filter that grabbed it was the one on the service we use. Which is where I found six emails. It grabbed six out over 12,000 that were sent. Which is one reason I hadn?t checked it. So many got through, so they weren?t filtering for duplicates of subject or even email address because many folks made more than one suggestion and all got through.
Why did it filter just those six? I haven?t a clue why those were held up. Of the other 600+ pieces in their filter all were junk. The same winners had other emails in the contest, they went through just fine. So it must be something about the name Ripley that trigged it to send them to the filter.
Most filters look for a keyword or pattern that it then identifies as spam and shifts it to the filter. And it is not just words, it is the pattern the bits make that can trigger a filtering.
So I offer my apologies for not catching it sooner to the winners. It was my fault for not checking. I do check it. Usually once a month or so and it is rare that anything in there is something useful. Rare enough I check it occasionally, but often enough that I do have it hold them till I delete them personally. I should really have checked it after the contest ended. So totally my fault.
The two people who suggested Ripley as well as the person who suggested Ridley will receive signed books. Which is what we originally said we would do. And one of the two Ripley?s will be in the acknowledgements.
We still will have the usually drawing and auctions, if I can get arc?s to so with from the publisher. So for those that didn?t win, you still will have a chance to get a book before the release date.
Again, my apologies to the winners.