Jo Robinson's Blog, page 112
September 19, 2013
Reviews Upside Down
Catching up – as always. Just got two months worth this time, so please be patient all my lovely friends on Google, Facebook, Twitter, and everywhere else. I’m burnin’ the midnight oil. 
When I wrote my first review, I got pencil and notepad out and made notes. Names, scenarios – all that stuff. Just in case someone accused me of not having read the book. You never know with people. I don’t operate like that though. When I read a book, I read every word. Whether I like it or not. So…. This can be really painful if you really don’t like what you’re reading. But hey – moving with the times. No – I just say when I really enjoy a read. If I think it’s absolute fetid devil turd, I keep my opinion to myself. I really do not believe that authors should review fellow authors work UNLESS those reviewing authors are Stephen King or one of the great and proven. If you’ve written one book called Taffy Luvs Jones… Well – Nah… If E L James reviewed any of my scribbles I’d laugh so hard I’d…. well… biting my lip here….. Pfff – ha haaaaa!
Anyway. As a buyer of books, I really do NOT like spoilers. Why the hell would I want to buy a book when some reviewer has already shared the plot, the characters by name, the outcome, and then in one really epic dumb sentence – their opinion – especially when that opinion is “This book sux – thers no reelizm to it”. There are a lot of reviewers out there who have donned the mantle of editor, beta reader – whatever you’d like to call it – and go through a book they’ve downloaded one way or another with a magnifying glass. Quite a lot of these people – most – have absolutely no credentials. If you can’t figure out the difference between your and you’re, you really should think before you criticize. Tell me where you’re coming from before you expect me to take, “This is stoopid” seriously. Especially for published indies – make very sure that your published works are immaculate in every way before you comment negatively on others.
After the recent absolutely disgusting Goodreads free for all, I questioned the value of any review, when such troll guys are given free rein all over the place. But after a big think I figured that it’s all good. One way or another this brand new indie world will find its place in the world. And fair will be fair.
Book Promo Day: 19th September, 2013
It is with great pleasure that I am able to post today's Book Promo and keep it ticking over for Steve while he's away having a nice refreshing nap and generally taking it easy and recovering.
Please don't let this be a short lived thing – AUTHORS you've never had it so good regarding opportunities to get free promotion on this popular blog, so:
Many thanks to Chris The Story Reading Ape and Steve Smy for sharing my book on Imagineering's promo day!
September 18, 2013
Reviews
I’m not a professional reviewer, and I only read for my own pleasure. Being a scribbler myself, I don’t ever leave a bad review, so it’s just as well that I’ve loved the last three books I’ve read. I gave them 5 stars ***** – every one! Here they are:-
The Fall of Onagros, Sage Book 1
Delightful!, September 18, 2013
By Jo Robinson
Amazon Verified Purchase(What’s this?)
This review is from: Red Gone Bad (Kindle Edition)
This collection of short stories surprised me all the way. Lucy Pireel has taken traditional fairy tales and made them her own with dark, tragic, and sometimes hilarious twists. Absolutely absorbing – I loved every single tale. I don’t want to give away any of these clever plots, so I’ll just say that I recommend this book to anyone, regardless of your preferred reading genre. This author is not only clearly very clever, but has a unique and enjoyable way of sharing her tales.
The Hangman's Replacement: Sprout of Disruption (BOOK 1)
September 16, 2013
I’m Really, Really, Boring
I’ve got a couple of reviews due. And I want to publish them all on the same day, so, a massive read fest going on here. Having a furtive zoom around the internet, I indulged myself, and not only opened this cool post, but clicked the link and typed in my blog URL, and here’s what popped up:
ISFP – The Artists
The author of http://africolonialstories.wordpress.com is of the type ISFP.
The gentle and compassionate type. They are especially attuned their inner values and what other people feel. They usually have a strong appreciation for art and beauty or things around them that affect the look, taste, sound or smell.
They are not friends of many words and tend to take the worries of the world on their shoulders. They tend to follow the path of least resistance and have to look out not to be taken advantage of.
They tend to value their friends and family above what they do for a living. They genuinely care about people.
They are extremely gifted at creating and composing things that stimulates the senses, such as art, music or food. They often prefer working quietly, behind the scene as a part of a team. They have no desire to lead others and they don’t want to be led. ISFPs are sometimes not good at giving him/herself enough credit for things they did well.
Common satisfying careers: Fashion Designer, Artists, Interior Designer, Landscape Architect, Nurse, Massage Therapist, Botanist, Teacher, Geologist, Translator, Social Worker, Occupational Therapist, Cosmetologist and Translator.
Notable ISFPs: Ulysses S. Grant, Sofia Coppola, David Lynch, Brad Pitt, Michael Jackson, Beyonce, David Beckham, John Travolta, Liv Tylor, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Nero and Wicket the Ewok.
Well… REALLY? Bloody NERO? Who’s Wicket the Ewok – hmmm? I thought it was just Ewok. Have a go… why don’t you? Back to reading…..
September 13, 2013
The Author's Summer Adventure...Part II...Freebie Friday the 13th and Saturday the 14th
Reblogged from The Linden Chronicles:
Hello to everyone!
This will be short but I want to thank everyone for their good thoughts, best wishes and prayers.
Since March, it has been something of a go. Not all bad. I hope to be back writing soon. Cardiac Rehab is going well. The doctor says I am doing remarkably well.
2 days ago was my three month anniversary for open heart surgery.
Welcome back Patrick! Reblogging to share the news of The Wolfs Moon being free today. Grab it guys - I've got mine!
Things That Go Bump
Right. Enough with all the serious scribbling for a bit. It’s Friday the thirteenth, and yes, I am going to be silly. I got to wondering about all these ghosties around and about. They can’t bother us in the day. But what happens when we join them? Better learn to sprint.
The Demon
He was short. And skinny. And the tiny glimpse of his face revealed an epically proportioned pimple. She grimaced.
‘I’m dead you say?’
‘Yes. Dead.’
‘So, who’re you then?’
‘Just a guy. You know. Hanging around. Not doing much.’
‘You seem kinda familiar. Have we met?’
‘Naah.’
Vera looked around. There was a bright speck of light in the distance. That was where she probably should be heading. But closer, and much more interesting, was a red door. Ornate, with all the gilt trim any self-respecting red door could want. There was a badly drawn picture of a sheeted ghost tacked on it. Then there was this guy. Just standing around staring at his feet. Looking oddly guilty.
‘What’s behind the door?’
She bent down a little as she asked this. Trying to get a good look at his face. She was sure she knew him from somewhere.
‘Dunno. Stuff,’ he said, turning his face away from her stare.
‘I think I’ll just have a little peep,’ she said. ‘If there’s anything scary behind there I’ll just leg it for the light. I don’t like being scared.’
He stifled a nervous giggle, moving his shoulder slightly to further conceal his face.
‘You think that’s funny then? Being scared. It’s not, you know. All my life I was tormented by this ghost. This terrifying demonic thing. It used to slither across my bed. Pull the covers off. Send tendrils of icy air across my body. And loom. It used to loom over me. A lot. It was so ugly. Demons are, I suppose. I used to get so scared, I couldn’t move. I always had to have the light on. It was the reason my old mum used to think I was a tart. But all my many lovers were only my lovers because I was so afraid of the dark. Scared to be alone with that thing in the dark. They never stayed though. Broke my heart, every one of them. Ugly girls like me are only good for a few fun hours. They always left me alone in the dark in the end. Bastards.’
She rubbed her chin thoughtfully. The sudden awareness that now she was part of the afterlife herself maybe that demon could get her anytime it liked was horrifying. She couldn’t be alone here! She lunged for her only companion, gripping his tiny arm so swiftly and firmly that he turned to her and squawked. She stared. The contours of his face quickly becoming familiar. That pointy nose. Those sunken eyes.
‘You!’ she gasped. ‘YOU’RE my demon?’
He tried to tug his arm from her grasping fingernails, but he had no chance. She tightened her grip. She saw it all now. He was no scary demon at all! Just a perv. A dead perv, who got his jollies fiddling with the blankets of single women. Maybe all scary spirits were just dead pervs! She wondered how he’d managed to look so scary. Maybe she could do it too. She closed her eyes tightly and willed herself to look different. Bigger. Bigger boobs too while she was at it. She looked down. It worked! Her boobs were huge!
The white light was getting closer. Her captive was cowering now. Terrified of the light. Vera grinned. Nasty little sod. She watched the light come ever closer, considering her options, and then, just before she gave in to the temptation of the love coming her way, she tossed the tiny man into its warm, welcoming depths, and made a dive for the door. She grinned hearing his terrified screams. He clearly wasn’t welcome in the light. Serve him right! But now for a little fun of her own. She knew a few guys who were about to regret ever leaving a not very pretty girl in the dark on her own. Fangs. That would be just the right touch. Fangs. And really, really, big boobs.
© Jo Robinson 2013
Picture courtesy of: Artdesigner.lv
September 11, 2013
Don’t Let Them Make It Real
When I’m in the middle of an intense scribbling period I really tune out the rest of the world. This is a very bad thing. I make a huge effort to check out what’s going on in the world around me, but nothing sinks in. My feathered horde take to foraging for marshmallows in the cupboard because I forget to put them out. And supper… Well… We’ll say no more about that. Poor husband guy. I don’t mean to be such a tool. The problem is that the only way out of this mode is a conscious effort to concentrate on “Other Stuff”. If I do this then I can forget the whole scribbling thing. Writers block? Who knows? It’s just a thing I suppose. Right now, I’m in this scribbling thing. Twenty pages of African Me to go. Then I can launch the bugger, toss a bottle of champagne – at myself – and move on on. So I haven’t been very clued up on what’s going on in the big old writers universe. I have spotted something that keeps on popping up though.
Lately I’ve noticed a terrible furore growing on Goodreads. This is most uncool. One “author” created a whole lot of false persona fans to love himself up, and then was dumb enough to trash a whole lot of other authors for no apparent reason. It was kind of apparent to me though. The guy was thick as two short planks. In the old days of traditional publishing this sort of thing would have been laughed out of the building. Now, anything goes it would seem. Barely literate one star “reviews” are popping up all over the place, totally negating the value of other reviews left by genuine readers who actually are more or less acquainted with the English language. So Indie Scribblers. I have to say. Reviews now count for not a whole lot.
How can you take the five stars seriously when you are so vociferously saying that the ones are from jealous, uneducated tools? You can’t. If someone really does not like your book, they are entitled to say so. And you can’t sort the wheat from the chaff with Amazon and Goodread’s systems. With independent publishing comes independent reviewing. This whole sideshow has taken the value out of any review in my book. I personally have one one star review. For me, it was a rite of passage. You’re not really an indie scribbler until someone calls you a tool and hates everything that you wrote. And your granny too. And calls you ugly. I know that my good reviews were genuine, and that’s enough for me. I’m not going to launch myself into a free for all with a bunch of vicious, stupid, trolls. I don’t think that petitions to Goodreads are the way to go. I’m going to get SO shot down here. I know. I just think that fighting that sort of breed of cretin is just going to generate a lot of compost. And those guys sitting under their bridges are going to love every minute of it.
Leave this issue well alone indie guys, and let the trolls bore themselves out of the picture without your input. It really isn’t worth your time. Just write on.
September 7, 2013
The Stolen Child
I love beautiful things. Words, things, music. One (mostly) really great thing about some of the fantastic old works in the public domain is that you can use them in any way you like. I really love it when modern, talented musicians sometimes add heavenly vocal chords and tunes to already angelic words, and just send these things into the stratosphere for me.
Desiderata made it to vinyl forty years ago with Les Crane. You don’t hear words like that often. Imagine if we all lived our lives like that.
I also really love The Waterboys. Can’t really think of an Irish group that I don’t love to be honest. They’ve taken the poem, The Stolen Child by William Butler Yeats straight to heaven in my opinion. Just the sort of thing for a mellow Sunday morning.
William Butler Yeats
The Stolen Child.
Where dips the rocky highland
Of Sleuth Wood in the lake,
There lies a leafy island
Where flapping herons wake
The drowsy water-rats;
There we’ve hid our faery vats,
Full of berries
And of reddest stolen cherries.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world’s more full of weeping than you
can understand.
Where the wave of moonlight glosses
The dim grey sands with light,
Far off by furthest Rosses
We foot it all the night,
Weaving olden dances,
Mingling hands and mingling glances
Till the moon has taken flight;
To and fro we leap
And chase the frothy bubbles,
While the world is full of troubles
And is anxious in its sleep.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world’s more full of weeping than you
can understand.
Where the wandering water gushes
From the hills above Glen-Car,.
In pools among the rushes
That scarce could bathe a star,
We seek for slumbering trout
And whispering in their ears
Give them unquiet dreams;
Leaning softly out
From ferns that drop their tears
Over the young streams.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world’s more full of weeping than you
can understand.
Away with us he’s going,
The solemn-eyed:
He’ll hear no more the lowing
Of the calves on the warm hillside
Or the kettle on the hob
Sing peace into his breast,
Or see the brown mice bob
Round and round the oatmeal-chest.
For he comes, the human child,
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
From a world more full of weeping than he
can understand.
September 6, 2013
Lads and Lassies, there be spammers amongst us - and they be on Goodreads...
Click on the cover to rate the book and join the fight!
Recently, our own Travis Luedke brought it to our attention that a certain "gentleman" by the name of Andrew Domonkos has been spamming the tar out of Goodreads, and had set up some sock-puppet accounts to assist him in doing so. (For those of you who don't know, a "sock-puppet" is a fictitious account created to amass a large amount of voting and rating power on any given subject or book.)
Amazing what some people get up to!
September 5, 2013
Back Down To Earth
I’ve made good inroads into the email pruning, and checking the dates on them I realise that I’ve been pretty much MIA since July. This would explain why I’m so much less on the ball than I think I should be. You have to keep doing something if you want to keep being able to do it, I reckon. Never mind. I’ll get back up to speed again hopefully. I’ve got a bunny aerial thingy for my desktop now, and even though everyone says that these things are really slow, it’s a good sight faster than I could ever have imagined the internet ever being. So, very happy with that. Jelly thinks it’s his spot though, and keeps on bouncing the ears down. He’ll break it in the end, little bugger.
I doubt that there’s a more fearless inch of feathers anywhere on the planet. There are hundreds of cats around here. They can’t ever get in because we’ve got screens up, but they keep on popping up on the windowsills and peering in. Jelly and Button peer right back and yell at them, not at all scared. So far only one brave kitty hasn’t run away from my little feathered furies, and he got a nice wash down from me and my trusty hosepipe. Heh. The parrots are being as mellow as always, but those two little weavers insist on helping with everything. From hanging curtains.
To making sure my black and white printer has some cool green splotches just to liven things up now and then.
A big surprise is that there are a pile of monkeys around too. Slap bang in the middle of suburbia! They’re a terrible bunch of cowards though, and run like hell every time I try and aim my phone at them to take a pic. Not like that lot back in Zimbabwe who would charge you unless you were armed with a pellet gun and a dog.
I’ve also finished my first ever edit with my first ever live editor now, and I must admit that I liked it a lot. Maybe it was because she was particularly kind to me, but truthfully I think it was because she really knew what she was doing. I couldn’t figure out how to use the editing programme properly, so she patiently sent me actual examples of her suggestions. The sense they all made blew me away a little, and had me wondering how I could have missed these suddenly glaringly obvious things. She was incredibly quick too. It really was a fantastic experience for me, and I’m now hooked on editors. Clever guys.
I’ve started going through African Me from page one again. I just want to make sure that some of the things I removed before (because of where I lived and wasn’t overly keen on being arrested) wouldn’t be better off back in again. It won’t take long to tweak the few things that need tweaking, and I really want to get it out there now so I can move on with Shadow People 2, Lesser Being, and a couple of other bits I’ve had stewing on back burners for far too long now. I suppose I’m not the only scribbler whose played around with their first book too much. That’s more than likely why so many of them end up gathering dust in bottom drawers. There’s a limit to how much fiddling a story can take.
Now, back to my happily shrinking to-do list.
