Jo Robinson's Blog, page 115
June 30, 2013
How to Suck Eggs
I’m an extreme bookaholic. I should probably be attending Bookaholic Anonymous meetings. I could quite happily spend days cruising around Amazon, but I don’t have the time, so I tend to zoom on through once a week, looking for specific things. Apart from the novels (that I just know I’ll get to reading before I expire), I’m partial to “how to” books. Having only been part of the writing community for a couple of short years, I generally like seeing what tips and pointers are lurking around from the professionals. I know that having written my stories before it occurred to me to learn my craft, I must be doing lots of things wrong. Also, I’ve always loved reading about the opinions and personal lives of authors. Stephen King’s, On Writing, is a favourite.
I’m not keen on criticizing others publicly – purely because I am a craven coward, and you never know what the so criticized might get up to by way of revenge. Not at all because I don’t have quite a lot of opinions on pretty much every subject on the planet, you understand. I really do. But… Having just downloaded a book on how to write prose, that consisted of about three pages of rotten prose, twenty pages of advertisements for the author’s other books, and several pages on how cool he was in general, I have to cry “Crap!” If you’re going to write a “how to” book, then what it says on the cover should appear on the pages. For the first time ever, I returned a book to Amazon. Who needs that sort of rubbish lurking around on your kindle, and why enrich some guy who clearly is just out to make a buck out of newbies, and say bugger to the art of writing entirely? That sort of nonsense shouldn’t be clogging up the works on Amazon at all, and certainly not pages ahead of properly informative books, simply because some tool knows more about SEO than their authors did.
Some books I’ve bought on the art of writing have had glaring typos, grammatical disasters, and sentences of such stupendous silliness on their first pages, that I wondered what on Earth gave these people the balls to tell others what to do. I would not for one instant consider telling anyone what to do. Well… I do would really, but I don’t charge them for it, or retaliate overly when they start hurling abuse, cursing, and demanding to know just who the hell I am. Whatever rocks their boat I say. Quite apart from anything else, what about the poor innocents who take them at their word, and try write as they do? The mind boggles! If you really want to make some cash, why not write a “how to” book on something that you actually do know how to do? Anyway….
I think I’ll just write my own “how to” write a book here quickly, based on my own actual awesome trip, generally superior knowledge to everyone else in the multiverse, and being totally brilliant at everything. So…
1. Give in to strange automatic writing thing going on with right hand, and scribble out a book.
2. Buy computer.
3. Enter the world wide web from Zimbabwe with the help of the weakest internet signal on the planet.
4. Zoom around looking for editors, proof-readers, and cover designers.
5. Find none that take Visa, nor any prepared to help for free.
6. Zoom around finding out how to do it yourself.
7. Do it yourself.
8. The end.
9. Um.
10. Pretend to market stuff while chatting to online buddies.
11. Write a How To book.
That’ll just be $9.99 thanks. Oh! And buy my book on How to do Rocket Science too, while you’re at it.
I’m cool with the typos and errors from newbie writers, as long as I like their story. I’m one of them after all, so I know how hard it is going things alone, and I know that I plan on working at fixing any errors that I make, and learning from writers who really do know what they’re doing, as I head on forward with my scribbles. Why not give them the chance to right their wrongs before trashing their hard work? But as far as buying books to help you with the technicalities of getting to publication, my tip to newbie writers would be to look at the author of the “How to Write” book before you buy it. Check out their published works. And if their only other title is “How to Chew Gum”, move on up and keep looking.
Till next time friends.
June 29, 2013
Guest Blogger In The Hut – Lucy Pireel
My guest in the hut today is a wonderful lady of many talents. She is not only a very talented author, but also editor, proof-reader, promoter, and sought after reviewer. Her incredible energy, consistently friendly and approachable character, and a work ethic that you seldom see in us scribblers, have got her where she is today, and I am proud to call her friend. As well as all these things, she finds the time to sometimes post lovely whimsical musings now and then. You will find them in Lucy Pireel’s Blog, but I’ve asked her to share a bit of her awesomeness on my blog too. So without further ado, I give you, my dear friend, Lucy Pireel.
Social Muse
“When men speak ill of thee, live so that nobody will believe them.”
It is what Plato said, muses Lucy.
“It still holds value, you know? Do not let a single human hold any other back from the life that one chooses to live. Writing, reading or listening.”
Lucy sips her coffee, relishing the tranquillity of morning spent on the sofa, and the heavenly taste of dark brown liquid, flowing over her tongue like silk on a baby’s bottom.
“Yes, where was I?”
She shakes her head, and remembers to finish this thought before it flees from her mind, and leaves her head filled with harrowing images of men and mice, of pitchforks and monsters, of …
“No, best not go there.”
Instead she decides to live her life uncaring of the misconception of others and prove the humans wrong. She cannot, will not, let the actions of a single human put her down, not even the lack of action by others who saw it happen and did nothing to stop it.
People feel safety in numbers, in belonging to a group and do not want to be shut out. It is the same in the virtual world which lures and gobbles up human minds. Changes them into creatures different from what a human might be in real life. The fast lane of social media, where things change every other second, and people do not stop to think and consider what is written, do not try and reason, but judge in a split second, and do not for one moment consider the feelings of the ones on the other side. For those are not real people to them. How easy it is to ignore another when one does not have to look the human in the eye and explain ones actions.
“Why not take the time to read what is written and try to unearth what is meant by the writer? Or just be entertained?”
Lucy grins, drinks more coffee and nibbles her toast, offering some to those surrounding her.
“Relax and read, enjoy your tea. Don’t let any human, or their idea of how one should be, hold you back from what could well prove to be the next piece of wonderful writing/reading, or the most wonderful person you have ever encountered in your life.”
Thank you for joining me today dear Lucy, and thank you for those true and wise words. And for the gorgeous picture to go with your thoughts too. And now for a little Kirsch, and some Swiss cheese for us, I think, and a chance for my friends to join your warm and friendly spaces around and about the old world wide web. I’ve listed them all here.
Find Lucy Pireel and her books at the links below:
Facebook
Facebook Page
Lucy Pireel’s Blog
Lucy Pireel on Twitter
Lucy Pireel on Goodreads
Lucy Pireel on Amazon
Lucy Pireel’s Website
Smashwords
AuthorsDB
Google Link
Red Gone Bad
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/260239
Bound
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/281858
Both are of course also available at all other online ebook sellers.
Heaven’s Closed
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/265588
June 28, 2013
Very Inspiring Blogger Award
It’s a lovely honour to have received two Very Inspiring Blogger awards from two really special, inspirational, and incredibly talented ladies. Many, many thanks to dear Vashti and Taz. Go check out their sites – you’ll love them both.
Transcending Borders
Vashti Quiroz-Vega
The rules for accepting (although you don’t have to accept) these awards are:
1. Display the award logo on your blog.
2. State 7 things about yourself.
3. Nominate 15 bloggers for this award, and link back to them.
So… Seven Things About Me:
1. I love positive people. I think if you think negative thoughts all the time, you attract negative things.
2. I believe in Karma. What goes around comes around – eventually.
3. I love antiques, and have so many collections most of them have to be stashed away.
4. I have celiac disease, so I don’t eat gluten. I also don’t eat meat, and have discovered that without these things, I can eat my body weight in cheese and sweets every month without putting on a gram. So I do.
5. My chosen career was in sales and marketing.
6. I make my own tomato ketchup from scratch every year.
7. I can’t tell jokes.
And now my nominees. These are fifteen of my favourite blogs. I don’t only follow writer guys, as you will see below. I love to read about people’s real lives, really enjoy a good laugh, and like to keep up to date on the latest cool footwear too. Here are my fifteen great blog offerings for you to enjoy:
Ben’s Bitter Blog
Chris The Story Reading Ape
Disappearing In Plain Sight
I Hide My Chocolate
I Love To Read
Lawrence Grodecki
The Worlds Top Ten of Anything and Everything
Writings of a Mrs
Counting Ducks
Jcckeith
Jas Thinking Aloud
Style Salvation
Lucy Pireel
Different Shades of Reality
Marian Allen
Bird Blues and Fan Fiction
My poor blog has grown cobwebs during this last rotten week. My parrot is better than he was, but still not nearly right yet. I had to give him the medication that I really didn’t want to. I honestly thought he was close to death, and sometimes even if a cure is hard, you still have to try. I couldn’t get to my computer though. He refused to be left alone, and insisted on trying to follow. Then because he was so weak, he kept falling down, so I gave up and went to the lounge where there was no chance of the poor guy hitting the deck. The rest of the horde were strangely silent, all just hanging around him, with no tail pulling at all. I think they knew just how bad things were.
Apart from having to boil everything that the birds sit on or sleep in, in vinegar water every day – realistically the whole house is their oyster, I’ve had about twelve hours sleep all week, trying to make sure that he didn’t rip his wounds open at night. Now I feel like I’ve gone a couple of rounds with Mike Tyson, and keep on nodding off. He’s had a couple of small bleeds, but now he’s definitely out of the woods, and I’ve got bags of other drugs to treat the rest of the horde, so hopefully disaster’s been averted. I must say, it feels good to be back here, and thank you to my lovely friends for your well wishes and concern! I really appreciate it so much that you care.
On the scribbling front, I spotted a press release from Amazon in my inbox. I’ve never tried writing fan-fiction before, but after reading this, it seems kind of exciting, so when I’m up to date (in around 2019 I would imagine), I’m going to have a go. A couple of years ago I thought that this sort of thing was really just plagiarism, but I’m thinking that it really can’t be with the original author’s blessing, and it sounds like a bit of fun. Not to mention sharing the royalties with the big wigs. You could name drop too. “My co-writer Barbra Annino says….”, sort of thing. After reading a few different takes on some of the old classics, I’ve warmed to this a little also. I enjoyed the modern sequel to Gone With The Wind, and some of the old fairy tales have been reworked brilliantly. Others not so much, but never mind, that’s not the point of the day.
The stories that are in the game so far are:
Pretty Little Liars: Stained by Barbra Annino
The Vampire Diaries: The Arrival by Lauren Barnholdt & Aaron Gorvine
Shadowman: Salvation Sally by Tom King
The Foreworld Saga: The Qian by Aric Davis
X-O Manowar: Noughts and Crosses by Stuart Moore
I haven’t seen or read any of these yet, so I’ll lurk around and see what else pops up, but I thought some of you might want to have a bash at legally sharing dollars with the rich and famous. Sounds like a win win situation to me.
Till next time friends.
June 23, 2013
Bad Medicine
My parrot’s still not doing very well. At three o’clock yesterday morning, he shot out of his bed into the bathroom, and bled huge amounts down the wall from the wound under one of his wings. Not a sight to see. I packed his side with wound powder to staunch the flow. Birds can bleed to death very quickly, and even if all you have is corn flour to put on an injury or bleeding sore, you have to stop it immediately. I spent the rest of the day making sure he didn’t pick himself open, getting him to eat, and disinfecting his entire sleeping area again. The same thing happened this morning, with less blood, but still deeply terrifying.
I originally thought that this was being caused by some sort of feather mite, but now I’m certain that he has a parasite called Giardia. It’s a really evil thing. I’ve looked at pictures, and researched his symptoms. They’re pretty classic, and he has the full set. He’s been pulling the feathers out from the inside of his legs, and from his back and under his wings because of the itching brought on by this, to the point where he’s now had sores there for a couple weeks – one in each wing pit. The problem is that the vet only had one drug called Flagyl (metronidazole) to treat him with. I’ve got it, but I’m terrified to give it to him. From what I’ve found out, it’s not very effective. The Giardia either comes back or it doesn’t kill the parasite in the first place, and the side effects are horrendous. From the sounds of things, it’s likely to do just as much, if not more harm than this particular bug does. I won’t generally give anything to my animals that I wouldn’t be prepared to take myself, so I’ve been treating him with herbs that are known to be anti-parasitic, and antibiotics to stop infection.
I’ve spent all my online time looking at avian websites for advice, and apart from one drug that I’m trying my best to lay my hands on as quickly as I can (it seems to be only available in Germany), I’m not seeing any other solutions. As this parasite is highly contagious between birds, I’m going to treat all of the horde just as soon as I get it. But everyone’s advising quite strongly against the medicine that I have, and I’m at my wits end. Do I treat him as best as I can, and wait till I get the one medication that’s safe, or do I take the chance of liver failure, not actually curing the bird, and all sorts of other really life-threatening side effects, and give him what I’ve got now? It’s not an easy decision to make when either one of them could be the wrong one.
I must say though, apart from some pictures of birds in conditions that made me wonder how anyone could be so uncaring as to let them get that far, I was really heartened by how much most people love their feathered friends. Our pets worm their way into our hearts with their unconditional love. They’re totally dependent on us, which makes most of us fiercely protective of them, and the thought of losing them not something we want to contemplate, even though at some point it’s inevitable. We just have to make sure that while they’re with us, they get the best care we can give them so they can be, at the very least, as happy as they would be flying free.
Till next time friends.
June 21, 2013
Freebie Day
My books are free on Amazon today and tomorrow, so I’ll pop the links on here for any blogger friends who fancy reading them.
June 20, 2013
Feathers and Quivers
One of my parrots has been quite sick for the last two weeks. Now I’ve figured out what’s wrong with him, I’m hoping he’ll get totally better quickly. He has two sores, one under each wing, and apart from dosing him with antibiotics, and loads of oregano (until tomorrow when I’ll finally get the right medication), he’s been needing round the clock looking after. At least he’s eating now, and judging from the amount of yelling he’s doing, I’m hoping to start getting some proper writing done again, and we can all breathe sighs of relief.
After my chat about anxiety disorders and panic attacks yesterday, it occurred to me that one of my previous posts touched on the subject of finding help. So instead of repeating myself, I’ll send anyone who is looking for new avenues of relief here. Before I read this book, and did what the man said I should do, I tried just about everything, including drinking water upside down. That one worked for a bit for the minutes I was concentrating on the water in my nostrils, but nothing else did. This book more than fixed me. Even if you think life’s just peachy, it’s still an amazing little book.
Right now, it’s parrot fixing time again, before more zooming down my emails. The last one I opened was a recommendation to buy a book on how to write. I won’t mention the actual title, but I will tell you that “write” was spelled “wrti” in the actual blurb on Amazon. Well done that man!
Till next time friends.
June 19, 2013
Eek, Screech, Rush Up A Tree
Procrastination can lead to terrible stress. I haven’t had the time to procrastinate recently, but after the last couple of weeks of wall to wall stressful happenings, I started to get a little concerned about the old cortisol levels. Not fond of cortisol.
Cortisol occurs naturally in your body. It’s the “Fight or Flight” hormone. This is usually a good guy. Just say you were moseying innocently down the road, humming a little tune, when all of a sudden a large gibbering hyena (I do live in Africa, so…) fell off the back of a truck right on top of you, teeth all gnashing, and looking you right in the eyeball with malice aforethought. Your brain sends an instant message to your body that it’s time to run like hell, your cortisol levels head for the roof, and off you lope to hopeful safety, after extricating yourself from beneath that huge hairy chest, with superhuman strength. After spending a little time cooling off in the dumpster you leapt in to cower in till the beast moved on, your hormones settle, and you smilingly head off to your local to tell your friends how you beat that thing into submission with your handbag, over a nice glass of wine. The end.
Sometimes though, if a person goes through prolonged periods of repeated stress, it appears that the body takes over, and thinks that it’s in danger all the time. This can lead to chronic and debilitating disorders, post traumatic stress disorder being an example. Once you get to this point it’s incredibly difficult to stop the cycle, although many people do, quite a lot live their lives in constant fear. A few years ago life in my little spot of Africa was stressful to say the least, pretty much for most waking hours, seven days a week. Added to that quite a few other random, but pretty horrible, bits of nastiness, and I found myself experiencing some really alarming symptoms. A nebulous feeling of utter terror, heart palpitations, inability to breathe, dizziness, and uncontrollable shaking to name a few. In the beginning they would come on for a specific reason, be it a small fright, or a large problem, but they always receded for a while. Then after about a year of this, they stayed. This was how I felt from the moment I woke up till the moment I went to sleep, for around six months straight. Often I thought that the grim reaper was at the door.
I didn’t have a clue what was wrong with me. I’d never been one to scare easily before. After a lot of research (there was no way I was going to tell anyone – they’d think I was nuts!), I realised that I’d been having panic attacks. Panic attacks that had now decided to hang around as a permanent thing. Cortisol levels so high that your body is always ready to fight or flee, and your mind is looking desperately around for the danger when there isn’t one at all. It’s a rotten way to feel, and no way for anyone to live. I for one was absolutely not prepared to anyway. So I researched some more, and after quite a couple of months of fairly difficult mental and physical exercises, I got a grip on myself. I won’t bore you with the details, but at the end of all that, I found myself in a better place than I had ever been in my life. I felt really strong, and that’s the way I’ve felt for quite a few years now. Now I’m mainly happy, positive, and ready to face whatever life brings on – good or bad. Of course I get stressed sometimes. That’s natural, but I’m not the tiny ball of fright that I was for a while back then. I’ll never be that person again, but I do recognise the signs that you could allow to push you over the edge if you don’t know how bad your destination could be.
Any sort of fear will nobble you if you let it hang around. Fear that you’re incapable. Fear that you’re helpless. No matter how civilized we think we are, we all still operate on instinct. Unless you force your mind to really be in charge of your trip, you could experience really horrible feelings that you shouldn’t need to feel. I’m not suggesting that you hop over the fence at the zoo and say “Hi kitty!” to a panther, but very often things will pop up in life that appear to be daunting, terrifying, insurmountable, but only a tiny few really are.
I like to look at these things nowadays, and ask myself, “What’s the worst that can happen?”, and unless the worst involves the death or injury of someone or something I love, I pull up my sleeves and try to fix what is or appears to be wrong. I’m not talking about the really hurt people here. I can’t imagine what they’re going through. I just mean people who have fairly happy lives, that sometimes crumble when confronted with really tough life challenges. Apart from the innocents so damaged in childhood, or the people that have been abused by real monsters in their adult lives, and also those with chemical imbalances in their brains that only medication can heal, we all have the power to face whatever demon happens to pop his nasty face into our lives. Strength always comes if you really mean to call on it. So…
I didn’t mean to launch into a medical saga, neither am I qualified to, apart from my own experiences, but who knows, this might be a tiny help to anyone who wonders why they always think that the sky is about to fall on their heads. As an end to this holding forth, I have to also mention that among other really bad effects on the human body, too much cortisol also slows down your metabolism – conserving energy in a dangerous situation – so when you are in this state, you’ll also likely pick up weight around your middle.
Bad things do happen. Really horrible things happen to all of us at some point. It’s part of life I think. But apart from beasties falling off trucks, or real and visible dangers, no thought or fear should ever be allowed to harm you.
Till next time friends.
June 16, 2013
Shadow People
What not to do at one o‘clock in the morning if you don’t want to get the creeps …. Google Shadow People, and then read articles about them. I’ve got lots of things on the go right now. One of them being the second book in the Shadow People series. I woke up at midnight with all my projects, and currently hectic real life bits also, zooming around my frontal cortex. Trying to go back to sleep was futile, so obviously it was time to start my day. There I was, innocently sipping a nice hot cup of tea, about to check my emails, when it occurred to me to have a squiz online for inspiration to resolve a tricky bit of Return to Lapillus. So…
The first article I opened told me what I already know. Shadow People is the name of things that many people claim to have had experiences with. They are shadowy apparitions that sometimes appear once only, but often hang around and terrorise specific people. They’re completely black, some have blood-red eyes, some totally white, and some have no eyeballs or features at all. There are quite a few theories about them. One scientific theory is that they are visions caused by an anomaly in certain individuals brains. Others range from the ghosts of dead people trying to manifest as full-body apparitions, alien beings from another dimension, or demonic entities. My Nefandus in Shadow People are a bit of a combination of all of these things, so not new news that brought on any light-bulb moments for me.
When I originally researched these critters I never looked at any of the comments attached to the articles I read. This time I did, expecting the laughter and jeering that this sort of thing seems to bring out in the online universe. Not so much this time though. Most of them were from those sharing their own experiences. Judging by the couple of hundred of accounts that I read, from people (most of whom seem to be just normal folk, leading ordinary lives) who say that they’ve not only seen these shadow people, they’ve been rendered immobile, and sometimes touched or hurt, I started to wonder how close to reality some of our fictional tales are. Given the weirdness of reality in general, I don’t see any reason to doubt the existence of these things.
Each one of the billions of us that inhabit this particular space-rock lives in a totally different reality. Life is experienced differently by all, and seen differently by each different set of eyeballs. Not one of us has any kind of proof as to why we’re here, or even if we’re here, and not part of the fevered dream of some unimaginable being, or the denizens of some wild computer game being played by more unimaginable beings. Scientifically we’re only starting to find out where we are, and it’s highly unlikely that the known universe that we can actually see is all that there is. What we can see is still a mystery anyway. We know that there is more “dark matter” (the invisible mass that must exist because it has a gravitational effect, and therefore weight) than there is matter that is visible.
I also read about a study done years ago, where it was found that the human body lost a couple of grams of body weight when we spiritually depart this mortal coil. I don’t know how true that is, but then again, maybe those grams are what make up the mysterious dark matter that makes up most of the universe. And it’s all over the place, so who’s to say whether or not, apart from possibly the souls of our benign great, great, great, great grannies, there aren’t a couple of Shadow People, lurking about in there, waiting to scare the daylights out of us in the dark of the night. Now I think I’ll just be off to turn on a few more lights.
Till next time friends.
Text © Jo Robinson 2013
Starry Night by Vincent Van Gogh
June 15, 2013
Guest Blogger In The Hut – Faiz Ahmed
Today I’m very excited to introduce you to my first ever guest blogger. I’ve decided to host a guest every week on my blog, to share other people’s news and opinions here, add a bit of spice, and maybe start up some spritely chats. These posts are completely written by my guests, in their own words, with no interference from me at all. I may agree with them or not – that will generally be my little secret.
So, without further ado – meet my fabulous friend, Faiz Ahmed. Faiz writes because he loves to write. Why else would an engineer with a post graduate degree in business management give up corporate life to enter this profession? You can find him on Google+ but not Facebook. He’s also on LinkedIn but not Twitter. Contact him – he’s more than ready to contribute to your blog as well, and share what he calls his random rants. He replies to every mail that he receives at mailfaizhere@gmail.com
The Endangered Species of Writers
Ideas can come easily, however, it is difficult indeed to clearly express them. That is why all are not writers. There are people who say, writing is an art which can be grown (or inculcated). I do not buy this opinion. Either you have this inside you or you don’t. If you have it, it can be polished; the art of concise writing (if desired and needed), for instance, can be worked upon. But until you have this gifted and “inherited from the abode above” quality of expressing yourself using written words, you cannot grow into a writer.
Nowadays I see a new trade called “content writing”. I will be honest, I tried my hand in it as well. Apart from the monotony of writing on the same topic over and over, I received another insight. The writers are like robots, who are given a topic, a fixed word length, a bunch of keywords and they start. Let me share a true example with you. There is this website development company I am associated with called IT Chimes and one content writer there wrote these articles in 3 days.
1. Acknowledge When Your Garage Door Asks for Repairs
2. When You Have To Get Your Garage Doors Repaired?
3. How to Ensure Garage Door Safety?
4. Selecting the Best Garage Door Opener for your Garage Doors
5. Garage Doors – What to Do When They Start to Malfunction?
I am not taking anything away from my good friend Vijay Pratap who wrote these. You must be someone who can never be bored to write these topics which are identical really. Then there is also the point of being ingenious to present the same wine in so many different bottles. But my thought drifted to a different direction. With so much of useless information overloading the web, will the good writing hold any value? After all, we must accept that we are spending less time on webpages than ever. And when we make the internet a place to dump coals, I wonder whether anyone will come looking for the diamonds, such as the writings from Jo Robinson here. How can we stop this proliferation with the democratic equality the internet presents to anyone and everyone?
I personally keep my blog well hidden. Not only have I never promoted, I consciously tried to keep it out of the reach of the search engines. That is me, but there are various other places where people write extremely well and also desire to be recognized. There again, I wonder, how well the search engines will rank these places. Yes, we have the power of social media. I met Jo in Google Plus only, but that is because I consciously made that effort. Will those who are not aware that Jo writes well be able to find her write-ups using any search engine? I wonder….
I would certainly like to see a world where pebbles are differentiated from pearls clearly and distinctively. Not only the writers who use their sincere feelings to create memorable and insightful readings need this but they deserve this.
Thanks for joining me in my guest hut today Faiz! Thank you very much also for the lovely compliments, and the chance to share your view on content writing, and the flooding of the internet with sub-standard scribbles. I’m looking forward to hearing if everyone agrees with you. Now… For some reason I’ve got a terrible urge to write a story about garage doors. And another to quickly Google my name too.
Till next time friends. xxx
