All portions of this site are stored and operated within the United States of America. This privacy policy has been updated to be GDPR-Compliant as of 5/25/2018.
OVERVIEW
My aim regarding your privacy has always been to keep any information I obtain private. I do not and will not ever trade, share, buy or sell ANY personal information you provide to me. You exchange personally identifiable information with us when you:
- visit my site (via any site cookies)
- sign up for site notifications
- sign up for my mailing list
- login to WordPress to comment on a post
- login to Livefyre to comment on a post
- contact me via my website contact form
- or connect with me on various social media platforms
I collect or use without collecting the following kinds of information:
- Anonymous Information
- Cookies on This Site
- Email Sign-Up & Interaction Information
More on each of these below.
This website uses a WordPress CMS (Content Management System) with plugins to help control social media connectivity and other content management. The site has built-in anonymous stats tracking through Google Analytics and other plugins, all of which are also GDPR compliant.
This tracking tells me in general terms:
- Page errors generated when visitors land on a page
- Most common search terms that brought visitors to the site
- Most common links that brought people to the site
- How many people visit the site hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly
- Average visit length
- Average number of pages visited
- In VERY general terms, which part of the world visitors are coming from (countries ONLY)
- Most common browsers
- Which days of the week are busiest and slowest
- Which posts of mine are most popular
None of this information will be traded, shared, or sold. Ever.
I do not allow outside advertising, nor do I allow services that “follow” members across the web to show them recurring ads on multiple site. I do not buy any advertising on such services. For my mailing list, I use MailChimp and MailerLite, both of which do not sell, trade, or share your information either.
If after reading my privacy policy, you have questions about your own personal information, you may contact me and I will answer your questions.
COOKIES ON THIS SITE
This site adds a handful of cookies to your browser. These cookies contain NO personally identifiable information. When you think of how I use cookies on this site, think of a dry-cleaner’s ticket: You exchange your laundry ticket, and the person on the other end gives you nice clean clothes that belong to you. The cookies added to your browser do the following things:
- Let you save your logged-in state if you are logged in to WordPress or via social media to comment
- Let me see if you are a repeat visitor to the website
All cookies this site uses can be deleted in your brower.
EMAIL SIGN-UP & INTERACTION INFORMATION
When you sign up for my mailing list, you provide the email address of your choice (which does not have to be your “best” address) in exchange for news and updates via newsletter. If you sign up via a convention visit to our booth or via InstaFreebie or BookFunnel, you may also provide your name. Logging in to the website to comment will collect your name, email address, and possible website address. This information is potentially stored 3rd party with WordPress or Livefyre, both of which are GDPR compliant. When you contact me via my website contact form, you provide your name and email address so that I might potentially contact you in return.
At any point, you can unsubscribe using the UNSUBSCRIBE link at the bottom of any email I send out.
If you REPLY to me from one of my emails (from ANY mailing list), it goes directly to me and will be read only by me.
Sometimes I save the really good emails I receive from my readers, because they make me happy — and because they frequently include cool stuff like requests for new books or you’ve shared pictures of your cats, or awesome stories about how something I wrote or did made a difference in that reader’s life. I keep these emails. They matter to me, and I love to read them. When I can, I reply. If you send me a personal email, assume that it will live on my hard drive forever. (I do not keep emails from trolls or jerks unless I need to provide them to the police.)
I do not make lists of the personal emails I receive, do not file them in any particular place or fashion, and I have never shared email addresses with anyone else from any source, either for money or for trade or for whatever other reason people give for betraying trust that way.
Finally, if you remove yourself from my mailing list, you will disappear from my universe without comment or repercussion. I don’t back up or store user-deleted emails into some sort of revenge pile. My objective in every dealing I have with you is to treat you like a person, NOT like a sellable asset.
reCAPTCHA
We have implemented reCAPTCHA v3 on our site and your use of reCAPTCHA v3 is subject to Google’s Privacy Policy and Terms of Use. reCAPTCHA is used to fight spam and abuse on our site. reCAPTCHA works by collecting hardware and software information, such as device and application data, and sending these data to Google for analysis. The information collected in connection with your use of the service is used for improving reCAPTCHA and for general security purposes. It is not used for personalized advertising by Google.