How’s your Japanese?  Mine is a little rusty, and because I sell a few books on Amazon.jp every week I thought I’d set up my author page. To save you the arse-ache of what I’ve had to go through to set mine up, here’s an easier way of doing it than toiling backwards and forwards from Amazon.jp to Google Translate:

1. Sign-in to your Author Central Account at: http://authorcentral.amazon.co.jp  I did set my account up a couple of years ago, but never got around to making an author page.  If you haven’t registered with Amazon.jp, they’ll need to confirm your email address first before they accept you.
2. Once registered, click the “本” (Books) tab on the top of the page.
3. Your books are displayed under “外国語の本” (Foreign Language Books).
4. Click the “さらに本を追加する” (Add more books) button near the top of the Books tab page. This will automatically…

As I prepare to re-publish #WheelerNovel, here are some things I wish I knew a year ago when I first succumbed to the siren-song of the self-publish button.

On this Day I Complete my Thirty-Sixth Year

‘Tis time this heart should be unmoved,
Since others it hath ceased to move:
Yet though I cannot be beloved,
Still let me love!

My days are in the yellow leaf;
The flowers and fruits of Love are gone;
The worm, the canker, and the grief
Are mine alone!

After writing about keeping people engaged with our blogs last week, I started thinking about those people we DON’T want to engage with – spammers. In the first part of this series I’ll talk about why people might spam comment on a blog and why we shouldn’t allow them to. I’ll move on to discuss how to identify a spam comment, and then how to deal with them.

What is a spam comment on a blog?

A spam comment is a comment that isn’t relevant to the blog post it’s commenting on and is placed simply to encourage people to click through to the website the spammer is promoting. At its “best”, this is used to promote a website, usually by a third party, but at worst, it could link to a dodgy site that could contain malware or viruses.

Why do people submit spam comments to blogs?

Like those…

Hey you girl, yes you over there
Reading through your specs as they settle on your nose
And you too
Reading as your thoughts race back to gym
Then that girl over there
Reading while she covers her scars up with a scarf
You too my girl
Reading with her hat on, covering her balding top

Didn’t they tell you? How can they not?
Never mind, I will. Today and tomorrow, everyday
You are beautiful, just amazing
Don’t you ever doubt your beauty, it radiates from within
You need them? You need them not!
People who judge you from your cover don’t deserve to see the inner pages
Withdraw from them all for we are here
Loving you for the person you are, the soul that resides within
See that beauty you have
Embrace what you’ve got, face that mirror and tell it you are beautiful!

Hello SErs! Harmony here 🙂 I hope this finds you all well. Today, I’d like to take a look at commas. For such a small punctuation mark, it has a big impact on how well or not our sentences read. Though we use commas a lot of the time, few of us understand them fully.

What is a comma? What does it do?

According to the Oxford English Dictionary: ‘A comma marks a slight break between different parts of a sentence. Used properly, commas make the meaning of sentences clear by grouping and separating words, phrases, and clauses.’

The different types of comma: Listing (Standard or Oxford), Introductory, Joining, Gapping, Bracketing, and other comma uses.

One thing that can make commas so confusing is that sometimes you have options, especially with the Listing and Gapping commas.

Because there is a lot to cover on this topic, I have split it…