Jo Robinson's Blog, page 104

Please Help a Fellow Author Who Has Suffered a Serious Stroke

Reblogged from "CommuniCATE" Resources for Writers:

The greatest gift blogging and social networking has given me is the people I have met, some of whom are very dear to my heart. This post is an appeal to help Rags Daniels, a fellow Author who has suffered a stroke. He is in his early seventies and has a long road to recovery ahead. Obviously, he is offline, so I am asking all of you to help out by sharing / tweeting about Rags' books and/or buy some to help him with the medical costs his family are undoubtably inundated with.

TSRA's Book Covers

Reblogged from Chris The Story Reading Ape's New (to me) Authors Blog:

You know what it's like, you've slaved over a hot story for absolutely AGES, had it torn apart and reassembled several times by friends, family, Beta Readers and maybe even an Editor or two and you are ready to publish it at last.

But hold on, there's still the matter of a Cover for your shiny New Bestselling Blockbuster!

You quickly check your purse/wallet, pockets, bank account, look in the kid's piggybank and check the combined family credit card limit, but find you just CANNOT afford to get a professional Book Cover Designer to make the cover you REALLY want.

What to Write When You Have A Fever

I haven’t been intentionally slack around the internet lately, although I’ve got a big catch up session to do now, and I’m very sorry about taking so long to answer comments. I’ve been feeling mysteriously ill for a good few days now. Really urgh, and not having the energy to do much more than open an eyeball. I’m not overly keen on doctors, so of course I’ve just been waiting to see what happens, all the while trying to ignore the certainty that my days are numbered. Well. They are numbered – I was just pretty sure that it had suddenly become a rather small number. Today I’m feeling a bit better, not a lot, but better. So whatever it was is hopefully going away. It’s probably just a gluten thing. Or middle age growing pains or something. My internet has also been off colour, and yesterday started going on and off, and not being able to open any sites properly, but I’m not scared of computer doctors, and the technician has just left and promised it’s all fixed now. So off to blog I go.

I’m writing a short story to submit, and hopefully make the cut, for a sci-fi anthology with Zoo as its theme. I don’t generally enter my scribbles in competitions, but this one caught my eye because of the Zoo worlds in Shadow People. There is not a lot about them in book one, but they feature quite a lot in the second book to be published sometime this year (no more exact dates – I’m done with carved in stone deadlines now). It occurred to me that this could actually be a great learning curve for me as a writer, whether it gets accepted for the book or not. Writing a nine thousand word story that can be read as a part of the series, although not a key part of it, and also as a cohesive short story that can, hopefully, be enjoyed by someone who has never read Shadow People seemed like a pretty good exercise to me.

I made the mistake of trying to cram every character from the book into it, and I also tried to get all the history and settings squished in too. That turned into an epic fail that even confused me when I read over it. I’m sure all my scribbler friends already know this, but I haven’t been writing for very long, and I’m definitely learning all the time. I know what I want my sentences to sound like, but I’m buggered if I know what a pronoun or an adjective is. So, it was a real lightbulb moment for me when the voices in my head told me to use just a couple of the characters and only the history and settings needed to write a story that doesn’t come across as the ravings of a woman with a bad magic mushroom habit. Late to the party but I figured it out in the end.

I got so excited at the way that its coming along that I ended up having a large attack of AND NOW I’M GOING TO DO EVERYTHING!! I do have a problem with overloads of thoughts and ideas all happening to me at the same time. It’s not actually a fun tendency to have honestly, because I also tend to be disappointed in myself if I don’t do something about every one of my crazy ideas. Often, my thoughts zoom around so hecticly (my word) trying to decide on which to do first, that I just burn out and do none of them instead. This time though, I’m definitely going to have a go at some of my latest brain splodge dumps of ideas – written them down too.

I only realised that Shadow People had to be a series when I was almost finished writing it, so I had to start from scratch with recording all the scenes and little mysteries that I’ll need for reference in the rest of the books. I was planning on seven books for Shadow People, but they may either shrink or grow as I move along. One of my new ideas was to write a couple of books for children. All happy of course – but based on the world of Lapillus in the happy days before the Nefandus came. I haven’t decided whether I should have a go at doing the illustrations myself, or hire someone to do them, but I’m so well chuffed with this idea that I had to share – hence the long blog post.

I’ve always planned on writing a tongue in cheek recipe book “written by” Princess – the cook in African Me, and revisiting Suzette and her friends in future stand-alone novels. This could all be the result of whatever odd fever I’ve developed, but still, I’m loving the idea of branching my stories out in other shapes and forms, so I will definitely give it all a try. Anybody heard of self-published board games? Ha haaa!!! I really do have a fever by the way, so…….

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Published on January 20, 2014 07:45

Internet Love

Since joining the old interweb, I’ve often been hugely shocked at the things people do to animals, for whatever reason. Some of the pictures and articles I’ve seen on Facebook have honestly left me reeling at how barbaric we as a species are to each other and to every other species on the planet. It saddened me to think that we are getting so much more evil. Then today it suddenly occurred to me that maybe the exact opposite is true. I’m thinking that the truth could be that the more people are becoming aware of these practices, the more they are adding their voices to those who want to stop cruelty to our fellow Earth denizens, and so the reason we are seeing more of these things is that more people want them to stop. It’s a good thing that good people see these things, and it’s even better when they overcome their shock and join those brave enough to try and fight for those who have no voice.

Before the advent of so many of us being on social networking sites we would be unlikely to have known that many these things were happening. The internet has made it possible for us to get any information that we need in minutes. It spreads word around the globe in seconds when word needs to be spread. Another thing I’ve found is that most people are truly very nice. The lonely can find company. You can find people that you would be really unlikely to have found without it. Love you interweb! Apart from Google hangouts – don’t love Google hangouts. I haven’t got a clue how to operate that, and there are a lot of people who must think I’m the rudest tool on the planet. One thing I recently found out though. Facebook very seldom notifies me of incoming messages, and that really is irritating, because with busy days, and a memory like Swiss cheese, messages often get lost. I wanted to send a message to a Facebook user who isn’t a Facebook friend. When I pushed the post button, I was informed that my message would go to that user’s “Other” box. Confused, I headed over to my own message box and clicked on the “Other”. Wow! Messages from way back when I first joined Facebook lurked in there, as well as one so important I feel faint at the possibility that I might never have seen it. I know that I’m dilly with techie things, and it could be that I’m the only person on the planet that didn’t know this, but just in case I thought I’d better share the news.

But that’s just Facebook lurgies. I love social networking. Having a favourite blogger friend stop blogging really is like losing a friend – I really miss them when they fall from my radar, and I have some long time online friends that I would do pretty much anything for. Keep it up you cool old buzzing cyberworld. All the world’s secrets are there for all of us to see, and with so many people making a noise about the rotten deeds being done in the world, the old interweb might just be the one thing that ends up making everything better.

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Published on January 18, 2014 07:07

Cute as a Lizard

You wouldn’t think that there’d be so much wildlife in suburbia. I’ve got loads of non-writing related things to do at the moment, one of which included a drive to town this morning. When I got back and opened the security gate to come inside the house, a humungous lizard fell on my head, and got a good grip.

Not funny. Not funny. No matter how much I screamed, jumped, and shook my head, the bugger hung on for dear life until I physically had to hold him around his middle and put him down. Not a zen experience at all. I’ve never seen a lizard run so fast. That poor guy probably got a bigger fright than I did, but harmless as they are, I really don’t want to do that sort of thing ever again. Yesterday I nearly connected with a hairy baboon spider the size of a plum, clutching its ball of eggs, directly above the laundry room door. So I’ll just be wearing whatever’s in my cupboard until they hatch and it goes away.

It’s funny how much looks really matter to us. I know that some lizards can be really cute and friendly. There was one up in Zimbabwe that regularly popped into the kitchen for a snack. But the thought of actually touching a lizard creeps me out. We also had a rather large frog that came in every night and slept on a pile of files in a niche behind my desk. He really was a handsome specimen as frogs go, and eventually got named Prince. But even he went on an unscheduled trip when he hopped on to my naked foot when I was banging away at my keyboard in the early hours of one morning. He wasn’t hurt, I hasten to add, but his attempt at being a cute foot frog pet failed horribly, purely because of his looks.

My weaver birds on the other hand, get to do any old thing that they want to do because they score 100% on the cute scale. Jelly is the only bird I’ve ever seen that has pucker full-blown tantrums. If he feels that anyone else is getting too much attention, he’ll zoom around shouting for a while, and then head over and pretend to be an earring by munching down on my earlobe and refusing to let go. But this isn’t a face I could ever be cross with. Sorry grasshopper.

So. The moral of this completely inane bit of waffle appears to be that cute matters after all. And you have to be especially careful of humans if you are slimy or scaly in any way. And if all else fails, try and be as cute as you can. Back to work for me.

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Published on January 14, 2014 06:22

Changes to the blog FREEBIES Section

Reblogged from Chris The Story Reading Ape's New (to me) Authors Blog:

After much pondering, fur scratching and racking of my single brain cell, I have made a momentous decision regarding the FREEBIES Section.

I want to improve the way visitors can access the books on free promotion, using devices ranging from Computers with mouse control (which makes it easy to hover, scroll and select books), to touchpad devices (which involves an unsatisfactory need to press hard on the touchpad, tap one side of the window that appears then try to scroll down lists of books to select the one you want to check out).

Black Rhino Rescue Project

Why is it that people get away with being allowed to continue to believe that legally killing one animal from an endangered species is justified because it will put money towards trying to save the rest of them from poachers? Ever heard of donations not requiring a death guys? With not many more than around four thousand odd black rhino left in the wild on the planet, the Dallas Safari Club plans the auction of a permit to shoot one. They further justify this with the fact that this particular rhino is too old to breed. So what? Why can’t he just be allowed to enjoy his old age in peace?

In general terms, I personally believe that hunting for FOOD – not new boots – is a lot kinder than breeding animals for food. At least hunted animals get to live free to begin with. But there is nothing under the sun that can justify this. Why not just give some money to saving rhinos if you have so much to play around with? Why does one have to be shot?

The poaching of these creatures is heartbreaking. As a species they have to endure being slaughtered in the most barbaric ways, often having their horns hacked off while they are still alive, whether they are mothers with calves or not, all because some tool somewhere believes that a bit of it will help him get his pecker up or something. Give these poor creatures a break!

The purposeful killing of even one of these animals is a disgusting thing to even contemplate doing. There are a group of people trying to stop this from happening, and I for one hope and pray that they get it right, although that’s not a given. The group is called the Black Rhino Rescue Project, and they’re on Facebook and Twitter, just in case any of you scribblers would like to help this poor old wrinkly guy out. The power of some wonderful authors fan reaching tools is a much better way to go than trying to fight this with death threats, as some people have been doing. I don’t often ask for shares, but on this particular occasion I really would appreciate it.

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Published on January 09, 2014 02:38

Volunteer is as Volunteer Does- My GRL Book Launch-Correct e-mail address.

Reblogged from Fiction Favorites:

Due to some problem that I have yet to understand; It seems the auto fill feature on WordPress changed my e-mail to my blog name. I think I have it corrected, but my post last Friday http://wp.me/p2Qoij-Wa had an incorrect e-mail included which I did not pick up before being published. The post has been corrected. If you wanted to volunteer and got your message kicked back, here is the correct e-mail:

AUTHORS - TSRA NEEDS YOU - NOW!!!!!

Reblogged from Chris The Story Reading Ape's New (to me) Authors Blog:

As I said before Christmas 2013, any author who is not yet on my Hall of Fame list, or an author who has already been featured but would like to upgrade with a new article, can send me an article and appear as a Guest Author in 2014 – click HERE to see details of what I need and how to get it to me.