PAPER CHASE: Thomas to write in Berton House

DEAR MISS LONELYHEARTS: My mom has shocked me and my brother (we’re both teenagers) by getting a new boyfriend so soon after breaking up with our dad — a really nice guy.

I just told my dad about her new boyfriend, and he said, “Oh, I think that guy’s been on the scene a while.”

I went back to my mom and asked if her new “friend” (that’s what she calls him) had been on the scene a while, like dad told me.

She said, “Just a very little while.” What is that supposed to mean?”

Most every author, including me, wants to be noticed by the reading public, media and book world. The perceived wisdom is that a strong social media presence raises an author’s profile and sells books. In the past 15 years or so, authors have been pressured by publishers, editors and agents to maintain a website and regularly post about their work on Facebook, X and Instagram.

Whether this online activity actually increases book sales is debatable. But this much is certain — all of this visibility makes authors easy targets of scam artists and fraudsters.

Literally every day over the last 12 to 15 months, perhaps longer than that, I receive emails — often three or four a day — from editors, podcasters, movie producers, marketing promoters and book club presidents. They all want to make me famous and my books international best-sellers. What more could an author want?

The trouble is they are all — to paraphrase Elaine Benes on Seinfeld, commenting on another personal issue — fake, fake, fake. Generated by AI in workshops in Nigeria, Pakistan, the Philippines and other distant locales, they offer effusive praise of my “brilliant” writing and supposed extra-special story telling skills.

Dear Miss Lonelyhearts: I refused to go stay at my girlfriend’s cabin in July, because her alcoholic ex-husband still owns the lot beside her. He’s building a big fancy cabin this summer and she’s more than OK with that, even though they’re divorced.

I seriously criticized him — calling him a drunk and a loser — and she actually dumped me before she went off to the lake for all of July!

When she finally came back home I went to see her. She told me I “just wasn’t enough of a lake person” for her.

Then the fight began! I said, “So are you back with him permanently?” and she said, “What do you think? You let me go!”

A police officer shot and injured an 18-year-old woman early Monday morning while investigating a College Avenue shooting.

A north district unit officer was in the area of Aikins Street and College Avenue at 2:27 a.m. Aug. 3 when he heard multiple gunshots nearby, the Winnipeg Police Service stated in a news release Monday.

The officer went to investigate and "was confronted by a woman and a 16-year-old youth." The officer discharged his gun and the young woman was injured, the police service stated. The woman was taken to hospital in unstable condition and was later upgraded to stable.

Police recovered a gun from the suspects and investigators later linked the 18-year-old woman and 16-year-old male to a shooting that occurred outside of a home in the 300 block of College Avenue. The 16-year-old was arrested.