Advent Calendar 2019

Thank you so much for visiting my website! This is my advent calendar where I have lots of fun Holiday goodies for you to download, watch, color, solve and so much more! Enjoy! For the images you can right click and save image as.

Did you know I have a free book!?

Did you know I have a free book?! Well I do, this is my paranormal short and it's a very nice way to be introduced to my books. Download it from Instafreebie today!

New Adult Coloring Page!

I know it's been a while since I've done a post. Life is very busy for me right now. However, with the new year I'm planning on doing at least one post per month, more if I can fit them in. This month I want to share a new adult coloring page. Since I write romance I thought this new coloring page would be a nice fit. Also with Valentine's Day coming up, well who can resist romance? Not me that's for sure!

Please don't hesitate to send me your colored versions at rjacksonjoseph@gmail.com, I'd love to see them! And feel free to pass the word that there's a new adult coloring page here and share the link! 

Enjoy!

Free Christmas Adult Coloring Page!

Happy Holidays Everyone,

I hope you and yours are blessed. As my way of saying thank you for reading my blog, buying my books I wanted to give you a beautiful grayscale adult coloring page!

Click here to download a girl and her reindeer! Enjoy!

This Thursday I’m Thinking About…Amazon Removing Author Reviews

I’m a writer. This means I get to know other writers and hang around with others who do what I do: we write. Some of these people get to be good friends of mine. Some of them I only get to admire from afar. Regardless of our relationship, we tend to value good writing and good books. We understand that the occasional not so good book may come up, but we hope it isn’t from one of us. And we keep writing.

I won’t address this issue from the sole viewpoint of being a writer. First and foremost, I’m a reader. Admittedly, when not crushing beneath deadlines and mommy duties and school stuff, I read much more than I write. And I’m a fast reader. This means that realistically, I can read up to ten complete novels in a month (I said I was fast). When I read something I feel warrants a review, it feels good to be able to do that, whether it’s a positive review or a negative one. It seems I won’t be able to do that on Amazon anymore.

I consider myself an informed reader. Not only have I been reading for the better part of thirty five years, but I know a good book when I read it. I can feel for well rounded characters and enjoy realistic settings. I absolutely love when a writer is able to pull me into their world with fresh ideas and beautiful descriptions. I also know a bad book when I read it, and though I will finish the entire thing anyway, I have some pretty informed ideas about what may have gone wrong in the execution (if that’s why the book didn’t win me over).

I’m not the reader who will leave a review based on a partial reading of a book and admit that I didn’t finish the book but not say why and leave a bad review anyway. I won’t leave a review, positive or negative, that clearly shows I didn’t read the book in question, at all. I understand the nuances and tropes of various genres of fiction and the requirements of successful non-fiction works. I have paid money in the form of higher education tuition to learn more about these things, in depth. But my reviews will be removed, and do not matter in the least. And those that do all the previous questionable things I mentioned I wouldn’t do, that no respectable reader/reviewer would do, will stay. And matter.

On the one hand, I understand there are some writers (I don’t know any) who might be waging war against competing works by posting unwarranted, negative reviews. Removing all reviews by authors won’t stop these folks, if they’re bound and determined to do something like that. They probably have at least one friend who can write their negative review in their stead, and this person will not be a writer. Anyone who is loading on positive reviews for their own works to boost ratings won’t be hindered by the removal of their author friends’ reviews. Those authors have friends who are non-writers who can be recruited for this purpose.

Writers tend to be big readers, which makes sense, because we have to know our craft and see how it’s employed successfully and unsuccessfully. That we can only share our views of what we read in select venues feels like a restriction I’m not sure I like. We can read as many books as we want and buy them all from Amazon. We can write as many books we want and sell them on Amazon. But we can’t talk about either on Amazon.

Restriction, indeed.

This Thursday, I'm Thinking About...Simple Math

I went to my friendly neighborhood grocery store and had an experience. The customer service is always good and the store is awesome and clean and all that good stuff. I’ve never had any complaints.

But then, there was this day.

I saw a display with a specialty cake pan that can be used to make open mouthed animal shaped cupcakes. Seeing the pan brought out all these domestic feelings inside me and I was inspired to purchase it to make the cupcakes for my oldest sproutling’s upcoming birthday. That the display sign announced 25% off sealed the deal.

I took the pan through the checkout and noticed it hadn’t rung up with the discounted price. Since I waited until after the checker was done (adding too slowly), I had to visit guest services to get a refund of the difference. No problem.

I got to desk services and a young lady helped me. She looked up at me, puzzled and asked, “What is 25% of $24.99?”

I returned her look and said, “Umm, I’m no math wizard, but I think it’s about $6.24 or so.” I’m really not good at numbers and I used the old school figuring, thinking that a quarter of twenty four is six and a quarter of .99 is about .24, rounded down a penny. Works for me.

She proceeded to ask one of her comrades, who shrugged his shoulders. She looked at the desk calculator behind the counter, still puzzled. During this time, I pulled out my cell phone and did the calculation on the screen.

“See? It’s $6.24.”

She was still confused. Another of her comrades came to her aid, a lady closer to my age. “What’s 25% of $24.99?”

The lady took the pan, and went into a back room. She came back out and announced, “It’s $5.00.”

I looked at both of them. “$5.00 is only 20%.”

“It’s $5.00.” She batted her long, false eyelashes at me.

“It’s not $5.00. It’s $6.24. Do I need to speak to a manager?”

Needless to say, I got my $6.24.

The point of this little story is not how I got the pan or my refund but the fact that I was totally amazed that a young person could not perform a simple math calculation to figure out the discount amount. She had a calculator right in front of her, but she couldn’t even use it. The lady who did go find a calculator obviously couldn’t use that one, either. What is really going on when the folks handling our money don’t know how to do simple math?

After I got my money and my pan, I went directly home and told my sproutlings that our activity for the day was our math flash cards. They were excited.

And I told them that if they were going to argue with folks then they needed to first make sure they were right.

This Tuesday, I'm Talking About...new anthology Hazard Yet Forward

Today, I’m talking about the exciting new anthology that released today, Hazard Yet Forward. Yes, I get excited about books anyway. And yes, I do have a story in this anthology. But those aren’t the reasons this is a must have addition to your libraries.

If you’re a reader, this multi-genre anthology will not only provide you with hours (even if you happen to read quickly) of entertainment and literary titillation, but the proceeds all go to help out a fellow writer/reader in need. A group of writers from the Seton Hill University writing popular fiction program got together and contributed stories to the anthology so that the proceeds could help one of our own, Donna, who is valiantly fighting breast cancer.

I’ve never met Donna; simply knowing she’s a strong woman and fellow SHU WPF’r was enough for me to want to participate. Those who do know her admit that she would never ask for anything, and that makes helping her all the more worthwhile.

Hazard Yet Forward contains several genres, which is part of the beauty of the SHU WPF program. Where else can you get your mystery/romance/horror/yet unnamed genre fixes all in the same place? And how else can you help a brave woman battle cancer?

Get your copy here: http://amzn.to/TcD7oK.