Jo Robinson's Blog, page 51
January 28, 2015
Most Mortals Need a Proofreader by Guest Author Wendy Janes @wendyproof
“Discretion is the better part of velour” :D :D :D Excellent article from Wendy Janes on proofreading.
Originally posted on Why can���t you successfully proofread your own work?
It���s very simple ��� you read what you expect to see.
When you read other people���s work it���s fresh and new. Any errors seem to leap from the page, as the following examples demonstrate:
���Perdita was so angry she felt like throwing the laptop out of the the attic window.���
���Mark was fifty-five minutes younger that Spencer. An injustice than irritated him no end.���
The errors in the above sentences look so obvious. However, when you���ve been working on your book for months, maybe longer, and you���ve re-worked, revised, edited, tweaked, fallen in and out of love with it more times than you can remember, it���s almost impossible to gain the professional distance that is required to proofread it effectively. This is no reflection on your skills as a writer.
I���d like to share my own (humbling) experience. You see, I���d been���
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#Read about Guest #Author Patrick Jones
Meet Patrick Jones, author of The Wolf’s Moon, and all around lovely person.
Originally posted on Chris The Story Reading Ape's Blog..... An Author Promotions Enterprise!:
Author Interview: The Wolf���s Moon by Patrick Jones,
The Linden Chronicles: Book 1
I had a couple of hours in between the next hurried crowd of people that wanted a signed copy of ���The Wolf���s Moon.��� All I wanted was to rest my hand and have a quiet cup of coffee and a cigarette.
I picked the grill and pub called Blazers. In the book I called it Barkers but if you are from the area, you know the place. It had great food and even better patrons.
There was an open corner table and I rushed to get it. The crowd at the bar was two or three deep and tables were at a premium.
Dana brought me a cup of their finest coffee as I settled back in my chair to reflect over the last couple of days. Like most Indie authors, I chose to self-promote the book���
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The Sunday Show – Defining Moments with Writer Charles E. Yallowitz
Meet Charles Yallowitz with Sally on her Sunday Show.
Originally posted on Smorgasbord - Variety is the spice of life:
Welcome to the Sunday Show and to my guest today Charles E. Yallowitz. Charles is an author and blogger who is very familiar to those of us who roam the corridors on WordPress. His fantasy series Legends of Windermere receives consistently high praise from his readers and with Curse of the Dark Wind launched in December of 2014 to great reviews it is clear that each book is highly anticipated by a rapidly growing fan base.
Having spent some time researching my guest I was delighted to find that on his latest blog post he had outlined his writing plan for the year. I thought I would share it in its entirety since it would scare the living daylights out of most of us who are planning on publishing one or two books this year:
Writing Plan for the Year
Publish the next 3 books of ���Legends of Windemere���:���
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January 27, 2015
The Willies
Firstly I have to say that I���m not in any way religious. Not in the normal way at any rate. I do believe in a greater power, and I also believe that each of us has a purpose ��� something or things that we have to learn, do, or share along the way. So. I research a lot of old myths and legends for my Shadow People books, as well as ancient building sites and so on. I���ve been doing a lot of digging around about free will, death, the afterlife, reincarnation, angels and demons again too, and now I���ve given myself the proper willies. When I was writing Echoes of Narcissus I kept on thinking that some malignant narcissists are actually demonic entities inside. Having known my own, and seeing a couple of videos online they very often look and sound the part. Even if they���re physically gorgeous, it���s always in the eyes and the voice that you���ll see or hear those glimmers of darkness.
Some people believe that after you die you become pure spirit again, but I don���t reckon that sounds very logical. If you���ve been an evil sod during your life on Earth, why should you stop being an evil sod after popping your cork? No. You���ll enter your next incarnation with that evil remaining within you somewhere. I think that souls can be blackened by your choices, and once blackened you have to choose to unblacken them or they���ll just keep getting darker. I know that a lot of people don���t believe in any sort of life after death or spirits and that sort of thing, and that���s fine, and probably a lot less creepy, but I do believe in these things, and the more I research, the more I wonder about payback.
There is good and there is evil. It���s pretty obvious if you look around the world these days. Seeing good in any form gives you a good vibe, and seeing evil makes you feel bad ��� or angry or guilty. I like to think of myself as mostly as good as I can be these days, but I still do things that I know are wrong. Like those things we use in our daily lives that are produced to the detriment, pain, or deaths of others. I do try not to contribute to harm too much as I zoom along, but sometimes I���ve chosen to take the easy way and look away instead.
None of us know with any certainty whether there will be payback or not, but if there is some of us are in for a rather nasty surprise. Throughout history there have been people who have risen to greatness who shared pretty much the same messages of striving to be and do good. To do no harm and so on. While we as a species have raised them up and often worshipped them, as a whole we are all either doing, or allowing to be done, the opposite of all those things they said that we so strongly agree with.
We all appear to be watching helplessly as our world and all who sail on it are destroyed, but unless you are physically at the mercy of a stronger physical force I think that our helplessness is a choice. Free will. We are all able to be as good or as bad as we choose to be. Fair enough, heading off to have a stern talking to with those who somehow we���ve crazily allowed to rule the planet along the way isn���t going to happen (although really cool plot for a book!), but every single day we have choices that will either add or remove a black spot from our soul. Every little thing that we do is important I think, and life shouldn’t only be about self-gratification.
All of this research has me thinking now that all the bad you do, maybe you get to take that with you, and you get to stay that way until you exercise your right to free will. So those evil killers and torturers that have come and gone over the years. If they weren���t tossed into the deepest pits of hell, and if reincarnation is true, well then, they���re back with us today in some form or another, and they���ll either choose good or bad. Or maybe they���re just so bad that it���s too late for good. Or is it ever too late? Either way, there really are some evil buggers out there these days. Some pretty creepy photos of spooks too, never mind dancing with the devil in the pale moonlight.
Image Credit: Paul Rubens
Demis Roussos Dies
Great loss to the music world. And I would like to add, to see him off:-
Originally posted on Have We Had Help?:
I loved his singing. Back in the 1970���s Demis Roussos was Greece to me and to many others. He died yesterday aged 69. He was only two years older than I am now. The world is a sadder place for his passing���
Rest in Peace Demis
Text to Speech: Editing Through Listening by @PSBartlett
Originally posted on 
Speaking for myself, as well as countless other writers, editing is a bear! As much as I love doing it, I���m always looking for ways to improve my process.
Enter my good friend and fellow author,Cristi Taijeron! Cristi has turned me on to text to speech with Kindle as an editing tool and I don���t think I���ll ever go back to the old way!
We usually write, revise and edit our books to death and repeat, repeat, repeat. We hand them over to beta readers and editors, and then we do it all again until our eyes feel like they���ll fall out. The endless hours spent searching for that missing word, that sentence that needs improving and even run on sentences can be very trying. The list goes on and on.
Now, here���s a tool that may make your editing process so much better!
If you have a���
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January 25, 2015
Saturday Round up – Posts from the week and upcoming attractions!
Originally posted on Smorgasbord - Variety is the spice of life:
Time for a keep round up of posts you might have missed during the week and what to expect next week.
My thanks first though to contritutors to the site this week. Charles Yallowitz on the Sunday Show ���Defining Moments����� great to find out a little more about this talented writer.
https://smorgasbordinvitation.wordpress.com/2015/01/18/the-sunday-show-defining-moments-with-writer-charles-e-yallowitz/
Tomorrow Seumas Gallacher is taking on the challenge so please pop in.
Clodagh Phelan shared the work of the ACE (Animal Care Espana) who do a remarkable job rescuing and rehabilitating stray dogs in Spain.
https://smorgasbordinvitation.wordpress.com/2015/01/20/a-very-special-place-el-refugio-the-spanish-santuary-of-animal-care-espana-by-clodagh-phelan/
David Cronin continued with the Ebook Doctor series on how to produce professionally finished Ebooks.�� Each post has a link to all the other parts.�� Another three to come next week and then David will do a Q&A about any additional questions you might have ��� make notes as you read each part.
https://smorgasbordinvitation.wordpress.com/2015/01/19/writing-your-own-ebook-part-four-what-ebook-format-should-i-use/
https://smorgasbordinvitation.wordpress.com/2015/01/21/making-your-own-ebooks-part-five-what-can-you-do-with-your-word-processor-to-make-your-ebooks-better/
https://smorgasbordinvitation.wordpress.com/2015/01/23/writing-your-own-ebook-part-six-creating-the-ebook-framework/
William Price King continues today with���
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Shadow People Book One: The Finding by Jo Robinson
HUGE thanks for this wonderful review and for putting the link up too. Very happy Sunday for me! :)
Originally posted on Ms M's Bookshelf:
Jo Robinson is a South African writer who has recently returned home from spending 18 years in rural Zimbabwe. ��She has written several short stories and a novel about human frailties in addition to this science fiction book which is the first of a series. ��I received a free copy of this ebook in an online give-away.
In Shadow People, Natalie (who is extremely wealthy and runs her own deli business) and her husband Gabe (who is also extremely wealthy and loves anything that smacks of paranormal) have bought a new house. ��Aw, heck, it���s a mansion. ��While puttering around in the basement home theatre, Gabe discovers a hidden room full of weird technology equipment and decides to break down the wall behind to see what strange activities the former owner, Lauder Shelty, got up to. ��He discovers a labyrinth of caves and caverns he��believes to be a movie���
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The Sunday Show – Defining Moments with Author Seumas Gallacher
Originally posted on Smorgasbord - Variety is the spice of life:
Seumas Gallacher is a man of many parts and I mean that in the nicest possible way. He has charmed his way into our hearts, and also into those of the thriller readers of the world, in a remarkably short space of time. He swapped the cut and thrust of boardroom politics and the inner workings of the international financial industry for the far more daunting world of self-publishing just a scant five years ago.
However, he took that particular industry by storm with his first two crime-thrillers The Violin Man���s Legacy and Vengeance Wears Black with 80,000 e-link downloads to date and counting. Print copies of the books are available online but also in bookstores across the United Arab Emirates. Seumas described his writing style in an interview as ���good guys smack the bad guys��� and by all accounts if you enjoy Lee Child and his main character Jack���
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