I’m seeing a number of warnings about the Valentine’s Day Storm Worm. This worm is similar to a Trojan horse because it gets the recipient of an email to click on a link with an IP address. Once you click, your computer is subject to control by someone else, exposing you to security risks that can bring future misery to your life. In one example, the email message subject line will read “with love.exe” .Other creative subject lines may pose as a Valentine’s Day message. This worm which also appeared in 2007 is sending you anything but love.

Martin H. Samson, a partner in the New York law firm of Davidoff Malito & Hutcher LLP, is a top authority on Internet Law. He authored the Internet Library site comprising extensive analysis of over 430 court decisions shaping the law of the Web. Samson also publishes the newsletter Internet Law Update. After reading my Dec. 21 post, 'Blogs move beyond original concept, some carry liability for authors,' Samson generously shared additional information about the subject of liability.

A couple days ago I finished up an interview and dropped by a bookstore on my way home. I’ve been visiting bookstores in a purely clinical way lately. Rather than wandering around mindlessly and coming out with a bag of books, I’ve been studying the way books are arranged in stores and especially the way they’re categorized. Either way, I still come out with a bag of books. When I visit stores I talk to people. I’m in the process of formatting my nonfiction manuscript, and this time, I’m doing my homework ahead of time.

Publishing has increasingly become a forum for experts. If you are a weight-loss guru, a financial expert or a spiritual sage and, more importantly, if you have succeeded in making money off your area of expertise, you automatically have an edge in pitching an article or even a book. And this phenomenon isn’t confined to nonfiction—look at Patricia Cornwall who, after working as technical writer and analyst in a medical examiner’s office, parlayed that experience into best-selling crime novels. But there are writers like me who for whatever reason decline to focus on a specialty area.

Message boards are a great resource for writers—you do a story about kumquats you look for a hobby group. Need to know about the effects of a disease or medical treatment? People are inexplicably eager to share. Amazing what grass roots research, a simple search in cyberspace, can do for you. But I also come across messages that I suspect are placed by political plants. Read more at Creative Writer US.