Regal House Press has a very thorough and extensive (139 pages) Author's Guide that they sent me once I had signed the contract. It is supposed to help me work through the process of having my book published. It is basically a 139-page (single-spaced) To-Do List with headings like "Obtaining Copyright Permissions: Written Works" and "Obtaining Copyright Permissions: Song Lyrics." Take a tip from me: never quote song lyrics in a book you write. Trust me.

I started with the section called "First Steps" because I am a methodical kind of girl. Yesterday, I worked on First Step #3: "Do you have a fully developed author profile on Goodreads?" and First Step #11: "Have you joined the Regal Author Community on Facebook?"* I started with Goodreads, thinking that would be easy.

But no.

Goodreads informs me that although there is clearly an author named Kathy Giuffre, they don't believe that I am her.

It is unclear why they don't believe this. I can't imagine that there is a hot global market in Fake Kathy Giuffres with people paying big money to nefarious Russian cyber-criminals to pretend they are me. I can more easily imagine people paying to ensure that they are not accidentally mistaken for me. But here we are.

But while Goodreads was irritating, Facebook was existentially devastating. They say that they don't believe that I am human at all. That really hurts.

My numerous attempts to prove my humanity were so unsuccessful, in fact, that I inadvertently angered the Facebook gods and have now been told that I am prohibited from trying to prove that I am human ever again. That is, quite frankly, not how I thought things would end up when I started my day yesterday morning. No one expects that.

So I am making vegetable soup and hoping the internet eventually forgets that I exist.