Jo Robinson's Blog, page 119
April 21, 2013
The Year of Writing Dangerously
Note to self: Don’t put eggs in pocket before bending down to inspect hen’s legs. Just thought I’d add that cautionary note to any friends who are thinking of doing this sort of thing. Bit of a gooey start to the morning. I’ve been a little away with the fairies the last few days. I’ve been spending most of my time trying to find things that I don’t want to lose, and transferring them to my laptop. I have a feeling that my desk dinosaur is dying. It keeps rebooting itself for no apparent reason. Anyway.
I keep on finding plots, outlines, and stories that I started writing, and then forgot about in the mad rush of this last year. This has caused me no end of trouble because now I want to dive in and write more of all of them. I’m also thinking that I’ve just pinpointed a huge problem with myself in general. My inspiration often gets out of hand. I have hundreds of ideas drop into my head all at once, and then I zoom around doing bits of lots of different things instead of concentrating on one. This is not a good thing, and having figured it out about myself now, I’m going to try really hard to change the way I do things. So, all of that is now nicely filed away for me to dig into in the future. I found out something else also.
I have no idea where inspiration comes from. I for one get some pretty weird ideas. When I first started writing, the idea of any other flesh and blood person actually reading my scribbles never occurred to me, so I just wrote what came out. Now I try and see what I write as a reader would, and I think that lately this has nobbled me. Reading my old stories has made me wonder if people really do like to read what just comes sometimes. I do, so why wouldn’t anyone else? I liked them a little more than some of the things I’ve written lately, and so have the people who’ve read them. My new rule will be to go back to where I started, and write according to my muse’s instructions, and not tweak too much, worrying about whether readers will “get me”. I think that some might, and that’s the whole point of my trip anyway.
I never held back at all writing African Me. I’ve got so many hot potatoes in there that all that would be needed for a party is quite a lot of people and piles of butter and some champers. Over the course of the last few months I’ve removed a couple of scenes, thinking them too forthright or graphic. After my epiphany today though, I’ll be taking my chances and putting them back in again. I’ve learned that restricting your muse can lead to stilted, half-baked scribbles. At least in my case I think this is true, and half-baked stories are not what I want to put out there. And now. Back to writing dangerously!
Till next time friends. xxx
April 20, 2013
Alien In Africa
There’s a big storm brewing here. I find it a bit hard to focus on what I’m doing when there’s a gale force wind blowing, and some fairly large twigs and branches zooming around, so I’m off to a very late and shaky start today. I’ll be concentrating on African Me from next week until it’s published, and then on to book two in the Shadow People series. I’m really looking forward to getting stuck in to getting my paintings finished for the new covers of all my scribbles too. A friend asked me the other day if it wouldn’t be wiser of me to stick to one genre, and wasn’t it confusing to write stories that are pretty much polar opposites. I’m not sure about the wisdom of this, but I don’t find it confusing. I find it easy to slip into book worlds, whether I’m writing or reading.
I do hope I don’t confuse my blogging friends though, with my trips into Africa on one day, and then heading off into alien worlds the next. It all makes sense to me, although I have been told that I can be somewhat odd, so I might be wrong. I really don’t find the idea of beings inhabiting other worlds in any way weird. In fact I think that saying that we are the only life forms in the universe is illogical. I spotted an item on the news the other day that NASA have found two more planets circling Kepler-62. They’re only slightly larger than Earth, both in the habitable “goldilocks” zone. Models suggest that they are both water worlds too. It doesn’t make sense to me that planets with warm temperate climates and covered with water won’t have life.
I don’t see why all other life would have to be bacterial either. The universe is most probably teeming with all sorts of critters way more advanced than we are. Although that would probably not be too difficult. Watching the news, I often wonder where all the hatred and awful acts will take us. At this rate we will be our own undoing, and not have to worry about being invaded by aliens. I’m still pretty sure that if aliens ever do pop on over, it won’t be to say Hi. They would probably be wanting the real estate, or maybe stopping over for provisions, and who knows what could be on an alien menu? Either way, I hope that when they do we’ll have worked our way up to where we can honestly call ourselves civilised, and to where we’re working together for the betterment and safety of all. If such a weird and wonderful event were really to take place right now I don’t think we’d stand a chance, because we’re too busy hurting each other to stand together against a global threat. I really hope we start to learn soon.
Till next time friends. xxx
April 18, 2013
Twitter Withdrawal Language
Today is Independence Day in Zimbabwe, celebrating thirty three years of independence from colonial rule. Regardless of the political situation here, that is indeed cause to celebrate in my book. I don’t get involved in anything at all political here. I’m a South African citizen anyway, and politics can be a slippery slope no matter where you live. African Me & Satellite TV was inspired by racism and colonialism across Africa, as well as the struggle for freedom against apartheid in South Africa. That being said, even though the story plays out in Zimbabwe, it’s a novel at the end of the day, with those themes running throughout the book. It never occurred to me that its publication would more or less coincide with elections here, but I’m happy that I held it back now. I’m watching events unfold here with keen interest, and really hope that everything goes smoothly and that the lovely peoples of this country can get back to living their lives again.
I managed to load up Twitter properly after quite some days barely getting a look in there. Today the electricity is on and my internet is at least working, although slow as a sick snail. It’s always Twitter and Facebook that won’t load when the internet is slow. This last week has seen the air turn blue for miles around a central me, and I’ve come up with many new and exciting ways of using the foulest words in the English language. Twitter is my favourite online place to be so it’s the worst place for me to be locked out of. Apart from the banter and the chat I don’t think that there is a better place for information gathering. I most of all love reading the few lines under new follower’s monikers when I follow back. I love the way some describe themselves, and make me instantly want to be their friend, and find out all about them. There really are some fascinating people in the world. I’m going to make a project of properly checking out a few of my follower’s profiles and tweets every day, and making sure that no amazing people are following me un-eyeballed.
Unfortunately after so many days of not being able to open a lot of emails, and posts on all the sites that I am part of, I know for a fact that some will be overlooked. This really bothers me. I hate the thought of anyone in the world thinking that I wouldn’t respond to anything they have to say. I think that ignoring anyone communicating directly with you is most unkind, so I’ll try my best to find every little thing. It might just take a while longer. And so, back to work for me.
Till next time friends. xxx
April 13, 2013
Lizard Attack
I’m very anti killing any sort of creature. Sometimes though, if they pose a mortal threat to humans around here or any of my feathered and furred horde, I do assist them off this mortal coil. Like the one and a half metre mamba in my office that I nearly stood on last year. Can’t have snakes that can have you dead in a couple of hours in or around the house.
A huge monitor lizard has been popping up around and about lately scaring the crap out of everyone. I was hoping that he’d just go away. No such luck though. I chased him out of the palm tree the other day, where he was ripping open weaver nests and eating the baby birds. Actually I threw a candle holder at him from the window I spotted him from, not being keen to go near the nasty looking bugger. They’re pretty vicious if you go near them and this one was the size of a medium dog. The candle holder worked though – he headed off and I forgot about him.
Yesterday in the middle of slaving over a hot computer I suddenly didn’t “feel right”. I know that sounds mad – it felt mad too, but something definitely just seemed wrong. Thinking that I’d lost my last marble again, I took myself off to make some tea. Looking out of the window, I saw five of my chickens standing still as statues with their necks stretched right out. This weird little scenario was more than enough to have me zooming out to see what was causing it. When I reached them they just eyeballed me, unfroze, and went about their business.
Unsuspecting me then headed into the henhouse to check for eggs, and turning the corner, nearly stood on bloody Godzilla as he prepared to chomp down on a terrified hen cowering in the corner. He immediately hissed, turned, and sprang at me. Obviously I let out a bloodcurdling yell and ran like hell, brave soul that I am. This brought Dzingy (who works in the garden) rushing over brandishing a large pole, and the dog brandishing some large teeth. Everyone leapt into the fray. I tried really hard to get Sprite away from the lizard, but for once he totally ignored me, and I had visions of his face clamped in those powerful hissing lizard jaws. Fortunately Dzingy quickly whacked it a mean shot on the head with his pole, taking it down and killing it instantly.
Sprite’s behaviour was an eye-opener though. A really Lassie kind of moment. His mother was a huge German Shepherd bred specifically to be a security dog, and quite scary, but his dad was my beloved old softy Labrador, Odin. I always thought that Sprite totally took after his father. He’s generally very sweet, plays and buggers about and wouldn’t harm a fly. The chickens swipe bits of meat right out from under his nose, and one of them always hangs around with him, pecking at spots on his coat. He just sighs and carries on. Yesterday he was total attack dog as far as that lizard was concerned. He was not having it in his henhouse. Good for him! So he got an extra big bone to share with his chicken buddy after that. Thank goodness I got my ominous feeling when I did though – mad or not – if I had arrived a few seconds later, I would have lost one of the horde. And we can’t have that.
All my scribbles are still free on Amazon today if anyone wants to read them. I’ll just pop the Amazon.com and Amazon.uk links to Shadow People up here though, so as not to overload your eyeballs.
Till next time friends. xxx
Amazon.com
April 12, 2013
My Books
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Free Books On Amazon
To celebrate the fact that it’s always Spring – somewhere, I’ve decided to put all my tales on Amazon up for free today and tomorrow (12 – 13 April). I’ll pop the links on here if you’d like to download them. I hope you enjoy them! They will go free at around 12 CMT, so in around two hours from now. African Me & Satellite TV will be published next, and then on to the second book in the Shadow People series.
April 10, 2013
Invitation To Spring Fever Reads Giveaway!
The Spring Fever Reads Giveaway! You are all invited to the event on Facebook on the 12th and 13th April. Lots of fun and brilliant prizes and freebies will be up for grabs. See you there guys!
https://www.facebook.com/events/321896231269344/
April 9, 2013
Funny, Funny, Funny!
This is seriously funny. Pee before reading….
http://karl-dixon.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/one-hot-summers-day-in-1980.html
Chickens And Bees
Busy week, dodgy internet. The usual bits and pieces. A couple of swarms of bees have invaded the house over the last couple of days. The first lot caught me out in the dressing room with only a tin of air freshener for ammo. It worked though. I came out scathed with only one sting, and that was from standing on a floored bee. Not too bad considering my usual luck. I wonder at the wisdom of using cute bees on children’s cakes and so on. Certainly around here I wouldn’t want any child being under the impression that a bee is in any way cute and wandering over to say Hi to a swarm. I get chills just thinking about it. These little buggers are deadly.
My feathered horde is growing. Angus has been eyeballing a limping baby chicken around and about, and being the macho, uncaring guy that he is, made a point of finding its owner, buying it, and bringing it home. Of course I named him Naka. He’s a sweet little guy, but the rest of the horde bully him, so he hobbles around all on his own all day. They bully the dog too. They’re like a gang of chicken hoods. How to stop chicken bullying – anyone know?
Right now our anthology group is preparing to launch its first book. So that excitement won’t leave me any time to get African Me out there for a little while. I’m not in any hurry any more though. I’m planning brand new covers for existing books anyway, and a re-launch of everything with bells and whistles.
I’m finally figuring out that it’s not necessary to zoom as much as I always feel compelled to do. In fact, I’m learning that speed can be a bad thing as far as establishing yourself as an indie writer is concerned. With my very soul being zoomy, I’m finding slowing down a little hard, but I’m definitely a lot happier with what I’m producing, and learning. I’m loving combining writing with painting too. I’ve started four paintings – one for each cover, but even though that really is slow going, it’s brilliant seeing my own visions for my scribbles coming to life a little.
Till next time friends. xxx
April 6, 2013
Guilty Of Speeding
Still busy sorting all my old blog posts into categories. Seeing the dates on these posts has made me realise how quickly I’ve zoomed along this indie writing road. I opened the WordPress site in March 2012 after joining Facebook in January. Before that the only IT knowledge I had was how to operate my cellphone – sort of.
As far as writing went, I’d only started that the year before when I wrote African Me & Satellite TV, scribbled in notebooks and on bits of paper shoved into an old manila folder. The story had been niggling at me for a while. To begin with I really just wished it would go away. I’d never written anything before. Never yearned to be an author, or ever imagined in my wildest dreams that I would be capable of writing so much as a paragraph of fiction that anyone would actually want to cast their eyeballs over.
It never went away though. It grew and grew, and became my obsession, until finally it was done, sitting in a tatty pile on my desk along with the two books that grew side by side with it. Two of the characters in African Me were so huge to me that they had to have books of their own. And so they did.
Not ever having been on line before, and not even knowing that Kindles existed, I tentatively tried to look for agents. I’ve never approached one though. A friend suggested that I join Facebook and look for writers there. I did, and found one brilliant little group of mainly aspiring authors and one or two stars. There, apart from gaining a couple of amazing friends, I learned about indie publishing. It was only towards the end of last year that I found myself swept away on the indie highway.
Along the learning way I’ve published two short stories, and a sci-fi/fantasy novel on Amazon, obviously expecting to be hugely famous mere hours after pushing the upload button. Shame about that. I’ve found out lots about finishing, formatting, and publishing e-books, as well as creating covers for them, not to mention marketing and SEO. The biggest thing I’ve learned so far is that I have only one toe in the water. As far as indie publishing and marketing knowledge is concerned I still have miles to travel. I’m just really glad to be on the trip.
And that trip was all about getting African Me & Satellite TV published. There were just unexpected twists, trips, and bonuses along the way. I now have the first book in a series out there, with loads more to come. I’m painting away to create images of Lapillus and the characters in Shadow People, so that anyone who reads the books see them a little as I do. I’ve learned that writing and reading short, sharp stories is brilliant. For the first time in my life I’ve written poetry. This was really hard, but a bit of African Me just had to have it, and I’m very happy with how it turned out.
African Me & Satellite TV will be published soon, and I am terrified and excited. My main point of this ramble is that no matter what trip you are on, you never know where it will take you.
To writers more newbie than myself I say – gosh – are there any? Seriously though, from what I’ve learned so far I have a couple of opinions.
• Don’t publish your beloved first. Publish another brilliant, but lesser love first and learn the ropes a little.
• Don’t believe that just because you have “Author” attached to your moniker, thousands will fawn at your feet.
• Learn about marketing on line, and follow through. I’ve been held back in this department by constant (daily – very often weekly) power outages, and the weakest internet signal on the planet, but that has never stopped me from trying.
• Research every thing that you do. Don’t fall for “editor” “publisher” tricks – there are a lot of nasties out there who will con you properly. Check credentials.
• Beware of spending the majority of your waking hours in the wrong areas of cyberspace. Do you really think that posting links to your books on a group of other indie writers will generate sales or get you real readers?
• Do join other indie writers for online events. You will build up a group of indie writer friends over time and this is good. You support each other. Boost each other. You need this. Just be careful who you team up with. Make sure your indie buddies are cool.
• Don’t ask people for fake reviews. If I see a book with hundreds of gushing five star reviews, I’m immediately wary. And if I then read the book, and it’s really bad, I’m not a happy girl at all. I do review for friends, but never if they ask me. If I like what I see, am a fan of the genre they have written in, I buy their book. I never leave bad reviews – ever. If I don’t like a book I leave it at that. There are loads of people willing to leave crap reviews – some that seem incapable of spelling “and”, I’m sorry to say.
• Have patience. What will be, will be.
Till next time friends. xxx
