Love bouncing off of Jo. Half way around the world it takes a little time for us to catch each other.

Jo Robinson

Who are all these people that send out odd emails? I don’t mean the ones from Nigeria, or in my case Kenya, suggesting that you pose as the long lost relative of some poor departed soul, present yourself at the local bank, and instantly be issued with a cheque for millions of dollars. You then split this ill-gotten loot with the writer of said email, and head off into the sunset on your newly acquired yacht. But first, just send along your bank details, five hundred United States dollars, and a few hairs from the head of your first born son. Yes. That’s really going to happen! These are just good for a laugh.

A while ago, when I was still new to all this, and unbelievable as it is, even greener than I am now, I joined a newly created group, simply because I was asked to by about…

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Jo Robinson

I saw a question the other day on a Facebook group, as I zoomed around on my own seemingly interminable mission impossible to catch up. “How do you write like a man?” I only noticed it peripherally. It had many responses, so I never felt the need to comment, as I always do when I see anything lurking lonely and unanswered. I carried on with the zooming, but it has crept in, and keeps popping up whenever my guys in Shadow People say anything, making me wonder now if my characters are “manly” enough.

Considering my confusion when I am confronted with a new cyber friend with only initials in their moniker, or one of those genderless first names, I can’t say that there are a lot of differences between man and woman. I quickly add that I only mean writing wise, before those hairy and rippling chested ones among…

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Cheating and just adding my negative 2 cents.

Jo Robinson

I was hoping to catch up with Twitter and Facebook this morning, but alas, there is no power, so I shall begin my threatened long blog of the day on the laptop, and post it later. It rained last night. That lovely kind of rain where it just comes straight down, nice and steady, getting into every parched little crevice, and giving everything a bit of water. It all looks green and inviting now, so, having pocketed my sunglasses first as a precaution, not having been outside for so long, I went for my first proper stroll of the month, noticing various things that have not done so well during the month of me being glued to my computer. I believe that I am directly responsible for the untimely demise of some previously pretty spectacular annuals, which is not a good thing.

The most noticeable thing of all, apart from…

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Another friend of mine from Africa.

carolineazurabeach

Its strange how certain journeys take you so far away from what you know or thought you knew. These journeys mould you and strip away the past, allow you to concentrate on the present and give you the clarity to build the future.  Dar Es Salaam, has been one such journey. It is a city awash with the growing pains of being the capital city of a developing nation. Sky scrapers and mansions sit uncomfortably next shacks and roads are sparse and rudimentary.  Yet there is magic in this place, the craziness gets under your skin and refuses to leave you. You begin to find that driving into oncoming traffic in what amounts to an overgrown motorcycle is fun and perfectly acceptable. Shopping becomes an adventure to the local road side market and shoes and clothes can be bought at the traffic lights just as easily as at the shop…

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A book in a month. I like it.

Jo Robinson

NaNoWriMo finished. And so am I. Fifty thousand words I’ve written in twenty seven days, so I probably won’t say no to an extra large glass tonight. There is still the final battle to be written, Shadow People didn’t quite fit into the fifty thousand. For once you find me at a loss for words. In fact I’m pretty certain that whatever I write after this will be garbled, so for the protection of your own eyeballs, I will keep this one short.

I’m glad that it’s finished, but I take away a lot from this experience, and I would do it again in a heartbeat. I mean I would do it again, if I had never done it before. If we are all still here next year, I believe I shall making a mince pie or two for the freezer instead. I never thought that anyone could write a…

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A book review, Heart of the Matter

Heart of the Matter
by Evan Currie

This work is the second book in a series following the adventures of the first Earth interstellar spaceship the NAC Odyssey. Space Opera, military science fiction and deep questions of how advanced technological civilizations behave are touched on in this series and there is a lot of action. The author juggles a lot of character points of view in this work and he manages to do a believable job of it. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and am waiting on the third and fourth installments.

There is a cycle to this, feeling overwhelm with social media, scrambling to get the writing done followed by crashing and decompression. Now if only we could spin the wheel faster.

Jo Robinson

There was a swathe of Shadow People that just didn’t gel, and regardless of the spirit of the event, the NaNoWriMo, as far as not editing goes, I didn’t cheat. I deleted it. That’s not editing really, is it? I had to replace eleven thousand words. I then had a panic attack, when I saw my new word count, and mimicked Naka the chicken guy for a bit. My feathers stood straight up. No, I never killed Naka. He’s far too cool. He’s in it till the end. Right now though, I feel like I’ve been stomped on by a bunch of Sumo wrestlers, but that’s fine too. I’m still happy with my story – that’s what counts, and if I avoid the always very real possibility of the sky falling on my head, I should crawl across the finish line in time. Whereupon, I shall give myself up to…

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Maybe we can all attend a convention some day.

Jo Robinson

Moving forward from pondering the reasons for it all, and pausing only to say, that things probably happen to pave the way for other things to happen. I forgot to mention all the good guys, and the beautiful things yesterday. Just lately I have met quite a few of them. New cyber buddies.

The thing about online friends, is that we don’t often get to meet them face to face, especially if they live halfway across the globe. In some instances this is probably a good thing. I’m sure there are some very dodgy people out there. In fact though, I’ve only come across one really nasty person on facebook, and that was quite a while ago, but it didn’t faze me too much. He was gone in a flash. Most people are nice, and the couple of really good friends that I’ve made now, I would love to meet…

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Jo Robinson is Playing that Funky Music and apparently getting down to Boogie.

Jo Robinson

I don’t just download free books from Amazon. I’ve heard of people who have thousands of never to be read books lurking on their Kindles. Helping fellow writer’s promotions out is a completely different story. Of course I’ll support them. That’s what independent marketing is all about, and why we are all here after all. But I don’t just do free because it’s free. I prefer to pay for something that I actually want to read, and will, with a bit of luck, eventually get around to doing. Us scribblers don’t have a lot of reading time, so it’s a precious commodity, which is why it is actually quite a big deal when we read and review each others work. I haven’t read any of my true favourites for quite some time now, so I think that it is anyway.

Naka, my surly chicken-like guy has now so entrenched himself…

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