Jonathan-David Jackson's Blog, page 5

How does Christmas work?

(Photo by Christmas Stock Images)

I get the general idea – jolly red guy brings you presents, drink eggnog until you vomit, peace unto all, etc. etc.

What about the pile of presents, though, how does that work? When I was growing up, my family didn’t celebrate Christmas. When I got married, my wife and her kids were the Christmas-celebrating type. Not wanting to ruin their lives by making them give up their well-loved traditions, I accepted their strange way of life instead.

This year, I got a few Wii games, some books, small box of Lindt truffles (my new favorite chocolate) and other chocolates, olives, and the requisite shower gel, shaving cream, and deodorant. It’s a pretty nice selection of things; I’m happy to have received them, and I’m grateful for the people that got them for me.

For the things I’ve got, I understand how gifts work. For most small things, and particularly consumables, I get it. It’s a sustainable cycle. I’ll play these Wii games, and by next year I’ll want more. I’ll read the books, and by next week I’ll want more. I’ll eat the chocolates and olives, and by tomorrow I’ll want more. For the books and the Wii games, once I’m finished with them I’ll donate them to a charity shop or sell them on.

How does it work if you get somebody an iPad, though? How do you top that next year? Do you just get the next model of iPad? What if a new model isn’t out by then? Do you get them… socks? What if you get somebody a car for Christmas? How do you top that? I know of a guy who got his three children each a new game console. (That’s two Xbox Ones, and one Playstation 4) What does he do next year? It’s been 7 years since the Xbox 360 came out, so probably a comparable time until the next one comes out. He can’t get them a game console every year, so what’s he going to do?

And if that problem is solved (since I presume it must be, because Christmas hasn’t been shut down due to it), then what about the person receiving all those gifts? So, right now, I’ve been celebrating Christmas for 3 years. I have pretty simple tastes, so I haven’t really accumulated much from those holidays. I’ve got an inspiration hand-made wooden plaque my wife made for me, I’ve got some shirts – I think that’s it. All the other things have been read, watched, eaten, played, and traded back into the circle of life.

What do you do if you’ve been getting things your entire life, though? What do you do if you’re 50 years old and you’re that guy getting an iPad this year? Surely you’ve beeng getting similar stuff all your life, so you’ve now got 50 iPad-equivalent gifts in your house. Where do you keep them all? Do you have a Closet of Christmas Past? Is it all just in a big heap? Do you use the new thing to smash the old thing with, and then just have one thing in your house like a minimalist Zen interior designer?

As I said, I’m new to Christmas. Maybe I’ll figure it out in another 10 years. Or maybe I’ll be buried under all my presents, as I believe has happened to you. I’ll send help.

How wise were the wise men?

(Photo by Waiting for the Word)

You all know the story. Three wise men follow the star to Bethlehem where they find the baby Jesus, give him gifts, and everything is great. What reason do we have for believing they’re wise men, though? Just the fact that they’re called ‘wise’? I could call myself a wise man, but the evidence is really in my actions.

Right now I’m going to present damning evidence that they’re actually just a bunch of idiots, as found in the historically-accurate song Do You Hear What I Hear by the historian-poet Noël Regney.

We start out, firstly, with the night wind talking to a little lamb. We’ll just ignore for now (and forever) that the wind is talking to a lamb. Then the lamb is talking to the shepherd boy. Alright, lambs can’t talk, but let’s ignore that too. Is this the Greatest Story Ever Told or a Pixar movie?

After that, we get to the good stuff. At last,

Said the shepherd boy to the mighty king
Do you know what I know?
In your palace wall mighty king
Do you know what I know?
A child, a child
Shivers in the cold
Let us bring him silver and gold

You don’t expect much from him, he’s a shepherd boy just barely out of the last century B.C. He’s uneducated. He can’t read, can’t write. How he has access to a king is a mystery, because I’m pretty sure they would have just executed him as soon as he entered the palace. Herod was killing a lot of people around that time anyway, what’s one more shepherd boy? So when he hears about somebody great, he wants to give them silver and gold because that’s what he wants since it’ll lift him out of his terrible life of paycheck-to-paycheck sheep-based living.

The wise men though, they hear about it from the king (the song doesn’t say, but we can make the connections ourself) and they decide, hey, that guy’s got a good idea with the gold, but the silver? Let’s just make that some frankincense, so he’ll smell good, and myrrh, so he’ll have nice smooth skin. With people bringing him gifts like that it’s amazing he survived long enough to die for our sins.

Really, guys? “A child shivers in the cold, let us bring him gold, perfume, and oil”? How about bring him some hay to sit in? Maybe a blanket to cover up with? Really, the gold is just going to make him colder. The frankincense is okay, I guess he could smell it while he’s dying of hypothermia after being immersed in the myrrh. With friends like these, it’s lucky for us (and him too, I suppose)  that he managed to survive long enough to die for our sins.

Updated Covers

I’ve made a new cover for the ebook version of The Quest for Juice and also updated the cover for the paperback version. If you’re wondering where I find the time to do all this, it’s by avoiding any actual work. The work I’m avoiding right now (and have been for months) is editing the sequel. Actually I’m not even to editing yet – I’m avoiding proofreading. :p On the left here is the paperback, and the right is the ebook.

(click to view full size)

I’ve got a little more detail here that shows the progression of the paperback cover, from left to right. The one on the left is the original cover from when the book was first published in June. The one on the right is the cover of the upcoming second edition, and the one in the middle is… in the middle.

(Click to view full size)

The main changes are:
- Changed shadow around orange to a glow
- Changed tagline to something funnier, with larger text
- Changed the title color so it stands out more and looks more like the title of a humorous book
- Changed background, made it darker, made it a smoother, more textury texture that covers the whole thing

My wife has since reminded me that actually there’s only *one* hedgehog in the book, so the “Hedgehogs.” part of the tagline is misleading. I’m truly sorry for anyone who expected multiple hedgehogs, and upon reading the book, discovered to their great disappointment that there was only one. I will remedy this as soon as possible and send you the missing hedgehogs in the mail.

Nelson Mandela: Beloved Terrorist?

(Photo by Ted Eyten)

Today, at the age of 95, Nelson Mandela died of a lung infection. I haven’t studied him extensively, but what I do know of him has always given me cause to admire him. The Onion pretty accurately says that he is ‘the first politician to be missed‘, and seems like just a pretty great guy. My daughter even wanted to dress up as him for the UK’s National Heroes Day (she eventually went as Florence Nightingale, because how do you dress up as Nelson Mandela?).

He was on the United State’s terrorist watch list until 2008, though. The internationally beloved former leader of South Africa who was instrumental in ending apartheid, was considered a terrorist by America until he was 90 years old.

The NSA says they need their vast surveillance powers to protect us from terrorists. They need to listen in on your calls, read your emails, and track your cellphone because of terrorists. The military needs 20% of our federal budget because of terrorists. There is no established definition of what makes a terrorist. It’s essentially whatever the federal government says. If they can say that a renowned humanitarian like Nelson Mandela is a terrorist even into his 90th year, then there are no limits. Anyone can be a terrorist, according to them. And if anyone can be a terrorist, I guess we really do all need to be monitored for our own good.

Is there any holiday that’s good for you?

(Photo by Dafne Cholet)

Every holiday, it seems, is based around spending too much, eating too much, or both. Thanksgiving was just pretty well summed up by my brother, who said “I didn’t eat all I wanted, and I ate too much.” I ate until I was nearly sick. So did pretty much everyone I know. I ate that much at a church dinner on Saturday, then again at Thanksgiving on Thursday, then leftovers every other day of the week.

Thanksgiving, of course, is now invaded by Black Friday so now you also get to spend too much as well as eating too much.

Ostensibly, the holiday is about being thankful, but by the way we act it seems that the things we’re actually thankful for are gluttony and greed.

Halloween just passed, which is a good excuse for eating so much candy that you should be ashamed of yourself. Easter will be here in a few months, and the chocolate then (at least for kids) can easily match or beat Halloween.

Coming up is Christmas, the king of the spend-too-much holidays. The amount spent at Christmas by the average person is around $800 (source: investopedia), which, in my opinion, is way too much to be wasting on a bunch of stuff that many people don’t want and certainly don’t need.

Isn’t the real meaning of Christmas to be spending time together, helping each other, giving to others, instead of spending hundreds of dollars on essentially needless consumer goods made in third world countries by little boys and girls who live in boxes and only get to come out to make you an iPad and be whipped? And isn’t Thanksgiving truly about being thankful, instead of eating everything in sight? Isn’t Columbus Day about taking over a continent by an intentional process of genocide… nevermind that one.

I don’t want to spend all that money. I don’t want to eat all that food. “Why don’t you just stop, then?” you ask. Good question. I know I don’t have to celebrate the way everyone else does, but to me, the main point of a holiday is that it’s a shared celebration. If everyone else isn’t celebrating Christmas too, then you’re just a weirdo that brought a fir tree into your house and put brightly wrapped boxes under it. Sure, I can have a pigeon instead of a turkey at Thanksgiving, but nobody is sharing that experience with me.

Maybe I’ll just make Presidents’ Day the centerpiece of my year, at least nobody is likely to commercialize or food-theme that day.

Authors: You Don’t Need the Smashwords Style Guide

If you have decent knowledge of Microsoft Word, you can forget the Smashwords Style Guide (SSG) and save yourself a couple hours of reading.* Of course, if you’ve already published with Smashwords then you’ve probably already read it, but I can save anyone who hasn’t yet!

If you’re wondering what Smashwords is, then you’ll like the next sentence. Smashwords is an ebook retailer and distributor; they distribute ebooks to Apple, Sony Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Library Direct and about a hundred other online ebook stores. Basically, they widen your audience reach. If you’re an ebook writer and you don’t use Smashwords, now’s a good time to start.

The SSG gives you the information you need to meet Smashword’s formatting guidelines, and is is 115 pages (plenty of pictures), but I think I can give you the important information in just a few numbered points.

Format your entire book using Word’s style options. Don’t do direct formatting. Every part of your book should have a style attached to it. The only direct formatting you can do is bolding, italicizing, and underlining.When preparing your book with Smashwords, activate Word’s show/hide feature with the pilcrow. That’s this guy:  You need to get rid of any tabs and unusual formatting, plus it’s just helpful to see exactly what’s going on.Don’t indent using tabs or manual spacing. Get rid of those things if they’re already in there, they’ll make your ebook look weird.You cannot have these things in your .doc file:
- More than 4 paragraph returns in a row.
- Headers and footers
- Hyperlinks to ebook stores; affiliate links; hyperlinks to PDFs
- Fonts other then the standard ones. (Garamond, Times New Roman, etc. are OK)
- Font sizes over 14
- Drop caps
- Columns, tables, text boxes, or text wrapping around an image
- Automatic footnotes or endnotes (Make them manual endnotes, then use bookmarks and hyperlinks, and then make sure to delete hidden bookmarks. Start the name of the bookmarks with ref_, otherwise they’ll show up in your Table of Contents.)Don’t give your text any color other than automatic (including black), because then ereaders won’t be able to change the text color.Make your table of contents by writing it out manually and then using bookmarks and hyperlinks. Don’t use Word’s built-in table of contents feature.You must have a copyright page at the beginning of your book. This is the format Smashwords recommends, and I recommend it too so you can be sure of approval:

Book Title
Author Name

Smashwords Edition

Copyright [year] Author Name

And that’s it! The SSG still has lots of other useful information for you and about Smashwords generally, but this is all you need to pass through the Meatgrinder and have your formatting qualify for the Smashwords Premium Catalog. Let me know if you have any questions or run into any trouble.

*On the other hand, if you don’t have good knowledge of Microsoft Word, then skip this post and use the SSG!

Thanks to Mark Coker for writing the Smashwords Style Guide. It was very helpful to me in formatting my own book and also in writing this post.

Body (Un)Happiness

I’m not happy with my body. I don’t know you, but I bet you’re not happy with your body. Why is that? My body is the best thing I have – why don’t I like it more? I actually know the answer to that question, I just like to ask questions and then answer them. Makes me feel knowledgeable.

First, as you probably already know, we’re surrounded by images of physical perfection. We want to attain that perfection, and the only problem is that what we want is literally unattainable. The woman in that magazine has been photoshopped – *nobody looks like that*. The man on the billboard is wearing makeup. That child in the diaper commercials has butt implants, that’s why his booty is so fine. You’ll never have an ass like his. Accept it.

The second reason, and probably the most important reason (I’ve put the most important thing second to reward you for still reading), is that everyone is wearing clothes all the time. Nobody knows what people really look like. You know what your own body looks like naked – at least if you haven’t gotten rid of all mirrors below the neck in your house – and maybe the body of your significant other if they let you keep the lights on, but you don’t know what other people look like. The person taking your order at McDonald’s has body acne. Underneath his suit, your boss looks like the congealed skin that develops on top of oatmeal if you have it in a slow cooker overnight. The person writing this blog post has stretch marks and an appendectomy scar.

We’re all covered up all the time, though, so you don’t see that. And if anyone has what they perceive to be an imperfection with their body, they cover it up. They wear a one-piece instead of a bikini to hide their stomach. They wear a hat to hide their bald spot. And so, when you get home from the beach, you sadly take off your own hat, look at your bald spot, and think that you must be the only person in the world who’s a little fat and has to wear a hat along with your one-piece swimsuit. You feel that way because that’s the visual message you get from not only every commercial, movie, magazine, videogame, billboard, etc. but also from every real person. Their bodies are covered up, so your brain imagines that they look just like the people on the billboards.

There’s not much to be done about it if you want to stay out of jail, but I’m willing to take that risk for you. As I type this sentence, I’m undressing. I’m walking outside. Good thing I have wi-fi, so I can hit the post button.

Photo gallery added

I’ve added a page of pictures to the websites, some showing me and some showing other things that aren’t me. To see them, click the Pictures link on the navigation bar above.

Congratulations Goodreads Giveaway Winners

The Goodreads giveaway entry period has ended, and I’ve heard back from a few of the winners that they’ve already received their books. I’m sure they value their privacy, so I won’t post their names, but congratulations to you guys and I hope you enjoy The Quest for Juice!

First Book Blog Review

Zoe Markham at the blog Zoë has reviewed The Quest for Juice. For the full review, go here: http://www.zmarkham.com/2013/07/the-quest-for-juice-jonathan-david.html.

Here are some of my favorite parts from Ms. Markham’s review:

“…I picked it up and then couldn’t put it down.”

“There’s no doubt whatsoever that Jackson can write. This book is littered with sentences that are a pure delight.”

“It’s a hard title to review because, it’s just so…out of the ordinary. Which is a Good Thing…“

“…what makes it stand out is Oscar’s narrative voice. It’s absolutely compelling in its charm.“

“Oscar’s is a fresh voice, and a strong voice. There’s an effortless style to him that makes him infinitely readable.“

If you don’t want Zoe having all the fun and would like to enjoy the ‘infinitely readable, charming voice’ of Oscar for yourself, here are some buttons you might be interested in: