The hot days of summer

Well, here in Kentucky, it is summer. And July here isn't just hot, it's humid too. Sometimes, walking out your door is like walking into a sauna.

Me, I hibernate inside during summer. Several years ago, I got overheated, and so I don't handle heat well anymore.

My seasonal preferences are as follows:
1 fall
2 spring
3 winter
4 summer

A new way to post

I'm going to be trying something out that I haven't utilized a lot before now, and that is email posting. It's a neat feature that blogger offers, that will hopefully have me posting more often in this blog.

The posts may be short, but I'm going to try it out. Hope you like what I share.

Technology is wonderful, and I love computers.

Till next time. -- JD --

My book preferences

In my younger years, (I'm 55 now, and got away from reading for a while), my main reading preferences was fantasy, science fiction, and romance novels. Back in 2011, I discovered ereaders, and renewed my love of reading.

Now, I have a kindle and am always reading something. I was just sitting here at the computer going through my book emails, and thought it would be fun to do a post on my reading preferences. So, here goes:

The book emails I get:

• BookSends
• BookBub
• eBookSoda

I've subscribed to several different ones, and these are the 3 that I like best, and have kept.

My favorite genres to read:

• science fiction,
• fantasy,
• paranormal romance
• romance
• western romance
• historical romance
• mysteries
• westerns

And I think that covers it pretty much.
As for genres I won't read:

• horror, of any kind
• stuff that's very, very violent
• and not too fond of apocalyptic themes
• anything that's real gory

I think you get the general idea. My tv and movie choices pretty much mirror my book genre preferences. Some tv shows I like a lot are:

• NCIS, all 3, especially loved the DiNozzo season finale
• Lucifer, can't wait to find out who 'mum' is
• Killjoys
• Scorpion
• Major Crimes
• Hallmark romance movies
• Hallmark mystery movies

Yes, I do have a book review blog. Here's the link for that, in case you'd like to check out some of my reviews:
The Leisure Zone
** Note to authors - at the moment, I have a pretty full read and review list. **

If you want to keep up with what I'm currently reading, you can do that on Goodreads -- me on goodreads -- I keep it updated pretty good now.

I don't care for continued or cliffhanger books. With my book review blog, unless the author sends me all of the series to review, I usually don't get around to reading anything else in the series.

I do like, and much prefer, stand alone novels. If they're part of a series, that's cool too.

I've gotten to where I don't care for multi-author box sets too much. Here's why:  You'll have usually a two or three 4-5 star books, then you'll usually have at least a couple 3 star books; and then there are the 1 and 2 star books, the clunkers in the set. Plus, you spend forever reading that box set. I'm getting to where I enjoy just the individual novels instead.

So, I guess that about winds up this post. If you have any questions for me, just post them in the comments. Thanks for stopping by.

-- jd --

Facebook live

Tonight I discovered a fun new toy - facebook live.

Did you know just about anyone can broadcast live on facebook? Well they can. I've somehow, (don't ask me how because I don't know), set it up where I get notifications when some people in my facebook sphere go live.

Tonight, it was Larry Gatlin and friends, live from the grand ole opry. After that finished, somehow I ended up on a map of ALL the live facebook broadcasts around the world! That was so neat. I spent a nice little chunk of time checking that all out, all around the world.

Here's the link, if you want to try it:
https://www.facebook.com/livemap/?ref=endscreen&pnref=story

It's a lot of fun.

Take care,
-- jd --

Playing catch-up

Have you ever played catch-up?
And no, it's not a game.

It's what you do when circumstances of one kind or another have caused you to get behind, and you're getting caught up on stuff. That's me, getting caught up on stuff.

Does the stuff ever totally get away from you?
I don't think any of mine has totally gotten away from me, but I do have a good bit of catch-up to do. But it's not as bad as it has been before. Over the past year, I've gotten a good bit of that catch up stuff done, but there's still more to do.

Then there's emails .....
Yeah, those can be so easy to get behind on. And then you just have to wade through them and get caught up.

Something not catching up related .....
I finally found myself an easy to use app so I can upload pictures from my computer to my instagram account. That's a lot of fun. I love to take pictures, so I have loads to upload. You can find me on instagram here:
https://www.instagram.com/jdriggsky/

Also, I've given my links tab on here the once over, and that's up to date.

Well, back to my catching up. Take care
-- jd --

Hello, it's me ... update

Well, 2016 got off to a rather rough start for us. We did the traditional New Year's Day foods and all that, (which we won't be doing again I don't think), and we've had some problems. If you've read my previous blog posts, you'll have an idea of what I'm talking about. But thanks to some friends, we made it through the rough spot; and one of those major issues has resolved itself.

Things are better now. We're not on easy street by any stretch of the imagination, but things are a bit better. And I find myself in the position of being able to spend the next several months working on whatever I want to. I've decided I'm going to enjoy it.

One thing I've decided is that I'm going to shelve, for now, my monthly newsletter.  I mean, we all only have a finite amount of time each day to do things. So you have to make choices on what you want to spend your time on. And here are some of the things I want to spend more time on:

This is a temporary working cover for my science fiction romance novel, Chasing Zane. I want to spend more time working on it. It's the tale of a girl from a ranching planet who takes off in search of her best friend Zane, who has suddenly went off planet, without a word to anyone. It's her first time off her home planet, and I'm still working on what she encounters along the way. One person she encounters is Zane's college friend Harrison, who she has a slight crush on, and has never met in person before. Does it sound good to you?

Another thing that I want to work on is a cookbook. I have all the recipes, it's just
a matter of sorting them and coming up with sections for them. The recipes are some that I collected back when I was in my teens and early 20s. There's some wonderful recipes there and I want to publish them in a cookbook. I'm thinking I'll make it a no frills, recipes only cookbook; a lot like the homemaker cookbooks that have been popular in my area. Here's the working cover for that.

So that's 2 of the things I want to spend time on.

Also, like most everyone else on the planet, I have some sorely neglected to do lists; plus, I'd like to post more stuff on wattpad. I'm going to be putting all my links under the links tab on here. That's one of those things off those sorely neglected to do lists. Plus, I'm going to pull out an idea I had previously shelved, of putting up an online review index for my book review blog, The Leisure Zone.

Also, I want to give more time and attention to this blog and my other blogs.
Take care for now,
-- jd --

Why my plans for my old review requests have changed

Lately I had some free time, and started working on something I had been working towards for a bit, and that was putting all my review requests from my book review blog, The Leisure Zone, in order. Here's a link to my previous blog post, talking about it:

Going through my review requests

I indicated that I would be contacting some of these authors. Well, I've changed my mind on that front, and won't be contacting them after all. All these other authors have one author to thank for this. 

Now, lets go back to yesterday evening. I was on my computer, going through the last of my review requests, some of the very oldest ones, dating back to when I first started the blog.

Back then, I would agree to review about any books. I didn't make a preference between genre or anything, and I didn't have my books to review list as organized as I do now. Since the beginning of my book review blog, I've sunk a lot of time into it; working on it and making it better, tweaking it and streamlining it. And I'm quite proud of the blog I created.

Well, one of the books that I had agreed to review, sounded like something I would still like to read; so I thought I would check in with the author. 

BOY WAS THAT A BIG MISTAKE! 

Seems she is in the process of getting ready to re-release the book I asked her about, and is editing it. First off, she wanted me to let her know if it was going to a bad review and just tell her and not post the review. Also, she wanted me to review the copy I had, and not the version she was getting ready to release. If you're confused, join the crowd, because I still am. She didn't seem to understand that I would need to review the version she was going to release, and not the old version that I had. So naturally, I declined to review the book, under these circumstances. Then she proceeded to get pissed at me, and told me she wouldn't recommend my blog. Hey, I didn't ask her to. I was going to discuss it further with her when she blocked my messages and unfriended me. So I blocked her.

But afterwards, I did get concerned that she would badmouth my blog, and harm all the hard work I have put into it. I know first hand what damage unfounded rumors can do. So I felt I needed to get ahead of anything she might do, and put up a post on my facebook timeline talking about it. Then this morning, I decided I would move the whole thing over to a blog post, where I could explain better; and it also went with the previous blog post as well.

So, I'm taking some actions regarding this very unpleasant experience:

• I won't be contacting all those old review requests, as I had thought about doing. I still have them, and they're nicely organized now, and I'm not sure what I'll eventually do with them. Right now I just know that I'm not in the mood to go contacting any authors. I have a nicely filled read and review list to pull books from.
• On The Leisure Zone blog site, I have put up a Review Request Rules for Authors tab, in order to try to protect myself and my review team from such unpleasantness.
• In my blog, The Book News Journal, I'm going to start a series of articles for authors, about contacting book reviewers.

So hopefully these steps will help. 

-- jd --