I need a new Doctor.

It’s not that I don’t like my doctor, I do. It’s not that he’s not a good doctor, he’s a very good doctor.

So why do I need a new doctor?

Because the put him in a call center. That’s right, I can no longer call my doctor’s office. I can no longer talk to anyone on my doctor’s staff. I can no longer talk to my doctor.

I talk to a call center.

The people at the call center have no idea who I am, and after holding to get my call answered they ask for ALL of my information, way more than they need, to identify me. Then they pull up my chart. Then I deal with them, people who have NO medical experience or knowledge.

There is no contact between me and my doctor.

There is no contact between me and ANYONE on the doctor’s staff who talks to the doctor.

It takes a week to get any feedback on anything. It takes 15 minutes to a half hour to deal with the people on the phone to get anything done.

On top of this my doctor’s office was moved. Sutter Health moved him out of his office of 20 years (along with a bunch of others) where I know nobody, I think his staff might have gotten changed as well. So just stopping by to talk to anyone there has gotten difficult as well.

So thank you Sutter Medical. You have successfully come between me and my doctor.

So I need a new doctor.

Yeah, it's my Birthday. And I'm feeling every year of it. Just don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing!:-)

Should I charge more?

I'm starting to think I'm not charging enough for my books, when I see people writing less, and charging more, and doing okay with sales. Makes you wonder.

I need reviews (to counteract the ones who are paying for them)

It's never fun to find out that several of the now famous ebook authors got famous by paying a grand or two to a company to generate fake reviews on Amazon. You can do some google searches, this all came out in the last month. Now that they're famous, some of them ratted out the service. Guess they didn't want any competition? And of course they're not being punished for it. It's not like they're bad writers, really, but how can I compete? On Amazon it is Ratings and Reviews that determine rankings, not sales. If all the people who bought my books (several thousand at this point) rated them, I'd be a highly ranked author and I wouldn't have to spend hundreds of dollars on advertising to get the word out. Because Amazon promotes high ranking books. So if you've ever read my stuff and liked it, pop on over to Amazon and rate it! Please!!! It's hard to keep writing stuff, if people don't care enough to take 5 seconds and assign a star rating to it. Or take another 20 seconds to write a few words about it. Authors LIVE off of reviews, more than anything else. I also write under a pen name, I write slightly cheesy paranormal romance. Most of the stuff averages about 12K words. I can pop one out in a weekend. I don't write a lot of them because I don't enjoy it as much. But I sell a lot of them. I also have probably gotten more reviews for those than I have my novels. Women love the stuff and want me to keep writing it - and they tell me by writing reviews. If I enjoyed it more, I'd write a lot more of it and give up on the scifi and fantasy. But I don't enjoy it all that much, I started out doing it for fun, and using it as a tool to work on dialogue and story structure. So quit being such a passive audience, tell me if you like it. Then rate it and review it! And do the same for any other author you like out there. Otherwise don't be surprised if they go away. -John

So what next?

That's the current question, what do I write next? I have another sort of modern day/old world fantasy book that's about 2/3rds through the first draft. A fantasy novel half written (and another in the same world that needs a complete re-write). Then there are a few stories for which the ideas and a general plot outline have been laid down, those are almost all scifi in the 'Children of Steel' universe. At the moment I'm not feeling all that driven to write anything, having just finished my last novel fairly recently and trying to do some actual marketing. I hate marketing, but I can't afford to hire someone to do it for me, so I have to do it myself. If all the people who read my books would just rate them and write a review, I wouldn't have to market almost at all, because ratings and reviews are what determine your position on Amazon and other sites. For the life of me I can not understand why 99.9 percent of all readers are just too lazy to click on a star rating for the book they just read. Especially if they like it. It's the MAIN reason I'm getting away from writing anthro/furry novels: I've sold about 5 thousand copies and got 20 reviews. That's a 0.4 percent rate! Meanwhile for the latest not anthro novel I sold 4 and got one review, that's 25 percent... So yeah, not a lot of incentive to write more anthro.

The Hammer Commission

Well the new book is finally out:


Did one of the Amazon give-aways the first weekend. Hopefully some of those folks will write a review. I don't understand why people refuse to click on the star ratings for a book, or even just write a few words to say if they like it or not. Reviews are a -major- part of the ranking system at Amazon, they're more important than sales really.

So remember, if you like a book, click on the 5 stars and write 10 or twenty words telling people that you liked it!

First Post

So, a writing blog, or an author's blog, or whatever you wish to call it. I've decided that I probably should put up something to talk about my books and my writing, a spot dedicated to just dealing with that and not much else.

It will be interesting to see what the results are. As for the title, well that comes from a comment from an old friend.

-John