James M. Jackson's Blog, page 5

Free or Not to Free—THAT is the question

Whether to give a book away is not the ONLY question facing authors who have control over such decisions, but it is one with implications.
When Amazon first made electronic book self-publishing easy, one of the successful promotion strategies was to give away a book—particularly the first book in a series. Readers were just getting used to eBooks and eReaders and getting one of your books into a reader’s hands was a successful strategy for becoming known. In the early days a free promotion cou...

Feeding Your Addictions

The psychologists have poo-pooed the idea of an “addictive personality,” but I’m here to tell you that I have one. A “friend” recently introduced me to the Wordscapes app for my phone. (It’s available for Android and iPhone.) It’s been sucking up my time ever since.
Here’s the blurb for the Android app:
This text twist of a word game is tremendous brain challenging fun. Enjoy modern word puzzles with the best of word searching, anagrams, and crosswords!

You’ll never experience a dull moment afte...

Rethinking Charitable Contributions

<!--[if gte mso 9]>

Six Rules of Author Self-Promotion

<!--[if gte mso 9]>

A Sense of Place

Clifton Area of Cincinnati, OH
If you are going to be a successful liar, you need a great memory. Lies accumulate over the years, and it takes more and more effort to keep them straight. By the time I started writing the Seamus McCree novels, (Empty Promises is #5), my steel-trap mind was already suspect. I reasoned that if I wrote using settings I knew, it was one less thing I had to worry about remembering. Oh sure, I could have developed a detailed series bible with all the invented places...

My Town and March Madness

The not-so-thriving megalopolis of Amasa, Michigan (where I get my mail) isn’t known for much, but if you are a March Madness fan, you should learn its name and why it’s an important place for the tournaments.

Why, you ask?
From Connor Sports websiteBecause the basketball game you are enjoying is being played on a floor most likely manufactured in Amasa by Connor Sports. A few years back, the court may have even contained wood from a tree that grew on my property.
Many of you know that my offici...

Choices

With less than three weeks before the official launch of Empty Promises, my life is consumed with marketing efforts. I have blogs to write, interviews to complete, reviews to post. The list is as endless as I want to make it, and therein lies the problem.
I think that the biggest issue I have with the Seamus McCree series is exposure. Goodreads reviews for books in the series average 4.4 out of 5. Except on those days of self-doubt when I’m convinced I can’t write anything more engaging than a...

A Writer Unplugged

Antarctic Peninsula
Earlier this week we returned from our 23-day journey in and around Antarctica. During that time, I had no access to electronic news feeds. I missed the Super Bowl – although I did hear the score the next day. I missed five shootings in or around schools: Lincoln High School in Philadelphia (1/31), an “unintentional” shooting of two in Sal Castro Middle School in LA (2/1), Oxon Hill High School, Oxon Hill, MD (2/5), the parking lot of Pearl-Cohn High School, Nashville, TN (...

Parting is Such Sweet Sorrow

Later today I begin the Great Antarctica Adventure. I’ve read all the preparatory material—at least twice. My camera equipment is packed. Batteries charged. Clothing checked against my master list and set aside. Bird books studied. Google translate loaded onto phone (to make up for my nonexistent Spanish skills). Twenty-five days’ worth of medicine set aside. Passport and cash in wallet. Boarding tickets printed out.


I’m ready to go, already . . . except for one thing. I’m not ready to give up...

Bucket Lists

In 46 B.C. Julius Caesar did away with a flawed lunar-based calendar and introduced the Julian calendar, based (as the Egyptians had been doing for a very long time) on a solar year. He didn’t get it quite right, which required the change over 1,600 years later to our current Gregorian calendar. All of which is to say that we should blame Caesar for having to start anew during the days of shortest daylight hours instead of (say) near the vernal equinox.
I didn’t find anything that linked Caesa...