Transcript
00:00.80
jeffekennedy
Good morning everyone this is Jeffe Kennedy author of fantasy romance and romantic fantasy I’m here with my first cup of coffee. So delicious. Ah so today is say it with me Friday woooo boo. Beginning of the weekend for some of us always worthy of celebration. February Twenty Fifth last Friday of February February went fast didn’t it. Time is just really speeding up again. I think ah, some storm has broken here along with morning we can catch Stevens and it’s um, it’s not. Actually warm but I went out to put water in the fountain for the birds and it’s um, you know feels very springlike. The sun is nice and warm. It’s um, you know like a real field of 33 but the sun is intense. Worming and spring like and the birds are singing. David says you can’t trust the birds that they don’t know but they they definitely think it is so um. Yeah. Ah, ah, how are you guys. But I’m definitely um I’m not going to write today still so that will give me a whole week. Well more or less. It’s a week off of drafting I did spend Wednesday you know doing copy edits and.
02:12.12
jeffekennedy
Polishing those final pages of grey magic um, and yesterday I was tired I did not get through all the business things I thought I might I had cut through a few so today’s just gonna be a businessy day and kind of kick back day I also do not have obligations this weekend. Well 1 meeting but it’s a regular Saturday meeting. So not a lot of things and on Sunday I’m going Megan and I have church. My friend Megan Mulry have I told you guys this it’s but I probably haven’t because I don’t mean to be offensive but we started calling that calling it that um well back in the pandemic probably like a year ago when things were on lock down here and the only places we could meet up were outside and so we would bundle up and go to places like um santa fe h q santa fe brewing headquarters where they had the fires I’ve talked about it before that cat fire is set up outside and we could drink champagne by the. Camp fire and it would inevitably be on Sunday because that was when we could that it was just a good day for both of us. Um, and we would usually meet for like you know at like 11 or 1 or something like that and a lot times we’d eat. You know we do brunch or that sort of thing. But um, we just start calling it church because it was always on Sunday we’d like um you up for church this weekend’s like yes buying awayfuse some people? Um, but you know what do you expect from. Ah, Daoist my church is outdoors and yeah I don’t know how lawsu felt about him spirits probably did not like them. He’s not racing and hunting maddened the mind I can imagine what he thought about wine. Have to look back through the surus. So anyway, looking forward to church on Sunday I’m gonna get some laundry done and I’m gonna get a bunch of stuff done. In fact let me write down something I need to start putting my taxes together I thought I’d better. Write that down.
04:46.76
jeffekennedy
Ah, so yeah, um, one of Amazon’s things and again this is like only Amazon is they flag errors. What do they call it quality. They call it something like um. Ah, quality issue brought about by the fact that so many people were throwing up absolute garbage and to like I’m sorry kindda unlimited I know some of you get mad at me because you feel like I don’t love kindle unlimited and reader. I do not love kindle un limited I think there’s a lot of problems with it but because so many people are putting out so much crap because you can kindle unlimited lets you just row, whatever well actually to be fair kdp allows you to throw up whatever crap you want so Amazon decided well they’d better start. Putting out start doing quality notifications. So and so if I go to my bookshelf I get this thing saying 1 or more of your books has quality items I need to be addressed and then you view the items that’s so gray magic because I uploaded it yesterday. Um, they even have on here last audit on and its bots it spots doing the audit they found that one of the links isn’t working so we’re actually gonna fix it and Karrene researched and the link is weird like sometimes it has the series title in it. Or not on my website. Whatever the other one is one from fire of the frost which I’ve been trying to ignore all this time. But since we’re going to fix this link I said well would might as well fix this. And it’s a typo in Grace’s story um which a reader reported I know a reader reported it because there’s like a suggested fix. Um, readers darling lovely readers. Please don’t report these quality control these quality issues to Amazon I know that people feel like they’re being helpful I know some people are compulsive editors. Um, it’s not helpful because and so this one in particular I closed it. But I could tell you what it is and when I sent it to Carine. She even said people really need to get lives. So if this was you I’m sorry but you do need to get alive. It’s not that we don’t love you but tell you what this correction is so it’s a typo.
07:36.36
jeffekennedy
And it says um, her shyness is but a shield once she lowers it you will understand why I love why I love her as I do only it says one she lowers it one. She lowers it instead of once she lowers it so this person. Corrected it reported it to Amazon as a quality issue all virtuous like and now Amazon has been pinging me about it every time I open my bookshelf even though I try telling you I wasn’t goingnna fix it. There’s an option to say we’ll not fix and give a reason and I’m like because it’s not worth it. To reformat the whole book for 1 stinking typo a really minor typo I told grace about it and she was really aggravated so we’re gonna fix it now because since we have to fix. That other link which Amazon did not catch interestingly enough it’s it’s random which ones they catch. But um, yeah I know that a lot of authors have started putting a note at the front of the book saying basically typos happen. Errors happen apologize for any if you notice something please contact me at this email address. Please don’t report it to Amazon because apparently if you have too many in there which doesn’t happen to me or hasn’t yet. Crossing fingers knock on Wood Amazon will actually take the book off sale I’ve um, seen people having their like their mayup fantasy words. Be reported to Amazon as misspelled words.
09:28.85
jeffekennedy
Craziness people craziness along those lines though I did see um the passive voice reported that Amazon is suing a couple of the big companies that provide fake reviews on Amazon. That interesting. It sounds like and I will link to the article in the show notes if I remember but it was on the passive voice so you can find it. Um, it sounds like. I thought at first maybe it was gonna be like some straw broke the Camel’s back but it sounds instead like Amazon has been investigating for some time and apparently they now I’m gonna have to find it so I can share. Okay I found it. So. It says there were a couple of interesting things in here. Um their lawsuits aim to shut down 2 major fake review brokers app Sally and rebatist. Um. Who helped mislead shoppers by having their members try to post fake reviews in stores such as Amazon ebay walmar epsey this legal actions one of the Amazon’s comprehensive and proactive efforts to ensure a safe and trustworthy shopping experience. Bum Pom bum bum um so it says um Amazon strictly prohibits incentivized or fake reviews which we knew and uses a combination of machine learning technology I e bots and skilled investigators to detect and prevent and remove them. Old investigators. Um says in 2020 Amazon stopped more than 200000000 suspected fake reviews before they were ever seen by a customer 200000000. That’s unreal ah, nefarious industry has emerged in recent years in which fraudsters facilitate fake or inflated reviews in exchange for money or free products. Amazon’s legal action comes after an in-depth investigation into these review brokers which taken together. Claim to have more than 900000 members willing to write fake reviews fake review brokers attempt to hide their activity and evade detection of course because it’s illegal and against terms of service. For example, the fake review site app Sally sells fake reviews for his lose $20.
12:07.14
jeffekennedy
And instructs bad actors to ship empty boxes to people willing to write fake reviews and provide apppsalally with photos to be uploaded alongside their reviews. The fraudulent scheme run by Robbaist will only pay people writing 5 ive-star reviews after their fake reviews are approved by the bad actors attempting to sell those items. So and we know that there are authors out there who’ve done this too. Those books that have like all 5 star reviews and they and they all sound weird I mean. That’s why I kind of laugh at skilled investigator because it’s pretty easy I think it’s easy to spot a fake review because first of all a book will have entirely 5 star reviews which nobody gets up. Even Stonehenge has like 1 ne-star reviews for not enough rocks with this is true. Um, sorry I’m still amused by Stonehenge. The fake reviews will say things like um. And don’t know if I can even recapitulate it but you can just tell that the person hasn’t read the book. Well they’ll say things like you know this book captured me from the beginning and is an excellent story. Yeah I mean it’s just you could tell that the person is written. Thousands which they have of these reviews. It’s um, yeah, a nefarious ecosystem has sprung out but it’s just amazing people. People will people right? so. Um, yeah, that happened I was going to talk about something I’ve had this little note out for myself for a little while I noticed I think I mentioned a while ago that I had been watching the expanse and I’m into season 2 now I’ve slowed down recently. Guess because I didn’t have a lot of brain cells. Well I’ve been out of town and all of that but I was noticing because it I think they brought them in at the end of season 1 but anyway in season 2 there’s definitely a storyline about the the martian marines because the expanse. Tells the story of like an intra-sollar system war and so the big players are earth Mars and the asteroid belt. The people who lived there and the martians have marines and I saw.
14:53.51
jeffekennedy
A couple of reviews on it bitching about how the leader they call her gunny. What is it I’m not good with military titles. Um, it’s like what if she’s the leader the gall in charge. Um, anyway, there are like male and female. Marines right? and the the leader gunny I think it’s like technical sergeant something like that is a female and I saw people bitching on there about female marines and it put me in mind of this writer I used to know a guy. Ah, guy who had been in the military and was writing about military things and he was writing about soldiers being in um, suits what’s what’s the word I want here people you know the um Mechanized suits. So basically. They were fighting aliens and so they were inside big shells I Want to say avatar type things but that’s not it. They would actually put the soldier the person inside the suit and they would operate it and they would have much more strength and yo shell kind of thing and they were talking about how? um. The smaller guys would fit better in the suits than bigger ones and so it had kind of shifted things because of you know it was no longer the brawniest guys but the ones who could better fit in these suits and so I’d read this and I um I asked him I said well why don’t you have any. Female Soldiers. You should you know why aren’t there female soldiers in these suits and he said oh no, that doesn’t work that way and I said well but it would work that way because women tend to be smaller than than men overall and you could put female soldiers inside the suits or you know by or. Not by um, androgenmous I’m not I Still not my words are not backup. You know, but anyway you could have people that are not very large, very masculine soldiers who are inside these suits and I said you know why? not female soldiers. And he said well because you can’t take women in combat and I was like excuse me and he said yeah you you know women aren’t able to withstand you know, just physiologically physically are not able to withstand combat and I’m like yeah but you’re putting them inside these big metal suits I mean let’s just leave that aside you know the whole strength thing. Um, you know you’re you’re putting inside these big metal suits right? It doesn’t matter what kind of physical frailty you have and he said no, you don’t understand the reason that you can’t have females in combat is that the men will not will be distracted because they’ll be.
17:43.77
jeffekennedy
Totally focused on protecting the females and not on the mission objective. Let’s just take a moment. Okay so the men are so just like biologically driven to protect the females to the point where they ignore. The mission objective I just I can’t even with this reasoning and he was very sincere about it and he got kind of aggravated with me you and he said well you know I’m not the guy you think I am I’m not that guy I was like well you know that walks like a duck and quacks like a deck i’m. God saying um yeah I want and there were so many things that you know how it goes you want you sort of continue these conversations in your head and this happened several years ago and I still continue in my head you know like the things I wanted to press him on which I wasn’t gonna do because. Didn’t want to get everybody else aggravated but it’s like um why why aren’t your soldiers better trained to pay attention to the mission objective. Why don’t they trust their fellow soldiers who are in these big mechanized suits to handle their own ship this whole thing of. Males protecting females is so obviously wrong I mean it’s it’s a wonderfully idealistic and romantic notion. Sure yeah it’ll be great if males protected females but the reality of it is is that’s not the case. Um. Did you know that a woman is far more likely and I don’t have the percentage at my fingertips to be murdered when she is pregnant than at any other time in her life. There was a recent study on it where they went back like over the last hundred years of data and they showed that pregnant women are. Disproportionately likely to be murdered and almost always by the father of their unborn child. So yeah, don’t tell me that men are biologically programmed to protect women. Don’t tell me there can’t be. Female marines in space I’m just I’m so tired of this I’m just so tired here I am in my weak feminine shell and ah so anyway, that’s my rant. The day. Um, and now I’m going to go off, get some things done I’m excited to crunch through this list. Wish me luck I would really love to get a bunch of stuff off my list here. Um yeah so I hope you all have a wonderful weekend whether it’s time off work or not.
20:35.70
jeffekennedy
And I will be back here on Monday we will be having a partee. We’ll be having a party um for release of grey magic yep if you have ideas of something you’d like me to do on the podcast for release day I’m happy to do it. I read I never nobody ever says I want me to read makes me think that nobody wants me to read but I don’t know it’d be fun to do like q and a I don’t do this live I don’t know if you have ideas send them my way. And I will talk to you all on Monday take care bye-bye.